by Ellen Wood
Mr. Brown took a quiet survey of matters with perfect self-possession, and then drew Mr. Butterby towards his room, just as though he had possessed the authority of Scotland Yard. Mrs. Jones was left alone with her sister, and caught hold of her two hands.
“Now then! What is the English of this? Had you aught to do with the death of Mr. Ollivera?”
“Never,” said Alletha; “I would not have hurt a hair of his head.”
Mrs. Jones, at the answer, hardly knew whether to slap the young woman’s face or to shriek at her. All this disgrace brought upon her house, and Alletha to submit to it in unrefuting tameness! As a preliminary, she began a torrent of words.
“Hush!” said Alletha. “They think me guilty, and at present they must be let think it. I cannot help myself: if Butterby conveys me to Helstonleigh, he must do it.”
Mrs. Jones was nearly staggered out of her passion. The cold water went trickling down again. Not at once could she answer.
“Lord help the wench for a fool! Don’t you know that if you are conveyed to Helstonleigh it would be to take your trial at the next assizes? Would you face that?”
“I cannot tell,” wailed Alletha, putting up her thin hand to her troubled face. “I must have time to think.”
But we must follow Mr. Brown. As he passed into his room and closed the door, he took a tolerably long look into Butterby’s eyes: possibly hoping to discover whether that astute officer knew him for Godfrey Pitman. He obtained no result. Had Mr. Butterby been a born natural he could not have looked more charmingly innocent. That he chose to indulge this demand for an interview for purposes of his own, those who knew him could not doubt. They stood together before the fireless hearth; however cold the weather might be, Mr. Brown’s fire went out after breakfast and was not re-lighted until night.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Butterby. With so much confusion in there” — nodding in the direction of Mrs. Jones’s parlour— “I am not sure that I fully understood. Is it true that you are about to take Miss Rye into custody on suspicion of having caused the death of John Ollivera?”
“I have took her,” was the short answer. “It is nothing to you, I suppose.”
“It is this much to me: that I happen to be in a position to testify that she did not do it.”
“Oh, you think so, do you,” said Butterby, in a civil but slightly mocking tone. “I’ve knowed ten men at least swear to one man’s innocence of a crime, and him guilty all the while. Don’t say it was perjury: appearances is deceptive, and human nature’s soft.”
“I affirm to you, in the hearing of Heaven, that Alletha Rye was innocent of the death of John Ollivera,” said Mr. Brown in a solemn tone that might have carried conviction to even a less experienced ear. “She had nothing whatever to do with it. Until the following morning, when she found him, she was as ignorant as you that he was dead.”
“Then why don’t she speak up and say so? not that it could make any difference at the present stage of affairs.”
“Will you let me ask who it is that has had her apprehended? Mr. Bede Greatorex?”
“Bede Greatorex has had nothing to do with it. ’Twas his father.”
“Well now, I have a favour to ask you, Mr. Butterby,” continued the other after a pause. “The good name of a young woman is a great deal easier lost than re-gained, as no one can tell better than yourself. It will be an awful thing if Alletha Rye, being innocent — as I swear to you she is — should be accused of this dreadful crime before the world. You have known her a long while: will you not stretch a point to save it?”
“That might depend a good deal upon what the point was,” replied Mr. Butterby.
“A very simple one. Only this — that you would stay proceedings until I have had time to see Bede Greatorex. Let her remain here, in custody of course — for I am not so foolish as to suppose you could release her — but don’t molest her; don’t take her away. In fact, treat her as though you knew she were wrongfully accused. You may be obliged to me for this later, Mr. Butterby — I won’t say in the interests of humanity, but of justice.”
Various thoughts and experiences of the past, as connected with Bede Greatorex, came crowding into the mind of Butterby. His lips parted with a smile, but it was not a favourable one.
“I think that Bede Greatorex could join with me in satisfying you that it was not Miss Rye,” urged the petitioner. “I am almost sure he can do this if he will.”
“Which is as much as to say that both he and you have got your suspicions turned on some other quarter,” rejoined Butterby. “Who was it?”
That Mr. Brown’s cheeks took a darker tinge at the direct query, was plain to be seen. He made no answer.
“Come! Who did that thing? You know.”
“If I do not know — and I am unable to tell you that I do, Mr. Butterby — I can yet make a shrewd guess at it.”
“And Bede Greatorex too, you say?”
“I fancy he can.”
Looking into each other’s eyes, those two deep men, there ensued a silence. “If it wasn’t this we man,” whispered Butterby, “perhaps it was another.”
The clerk opened his lips to speak in hasty impulse: but he closed them again, still looking hard at the officer.
“Whether it was or not, the woman was not Alletha Rye.”
“Then,” said Mr. Butterby, following out his own private thoughts, and giving the table an emphatic slap, which caused the frugal luncheon tray to jingle, “this thing will never be brought to trial.”
“I don’t much think it will,” was the significant answer. “But you will consent to what I ask? I won’t be away long. A quarter of an hour will suffice for my interview with Bede Greatorex.”
Weighing chances and possibilities, as it lay in the business of Mr. Butterby to do; knowing who the man before him was, with the suspicion attaching to him, he thought it might be as well to keep him under view. There was no apparent intention to escape; the clerk seemed honest as the day on this present purpose, and strangely earnest; but Mr. Butterby had learnt to trust nobody.
“I’ll go with you,” said he. “Tomkins will keep matters safe here. Come on. Hang me if this case ever had its fellow: it turns one about with its little finger.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Between Bede and his Clerk.
THEY stood near each other, Bede Greatorex and his managing clerk, while Mr. Butterby paced the passage outside.
When interrupted, Bede had his elbow on the mantle-piece, his brow bent on his thin fingers. A good blazing fire here, the coal crackling and sparkling cheerily. Bede dropped his elbow.
“What is it, Mr. Brown?” he rather languidly asked.
Mr. Brown, closing the door, went straight up and said what it was: Alletha Rye had been apprehended. But he looked anywhere, as he spoke, rather than into the face of his master. A face that grew suddenly white and cold: and Mr. Brown, in his delicacy of mind, would not appear to see it.
“What a cursed meddler that Butterby is!” exclaimed Bede.
“I fancy he had no option in this, sir; that it was not left to his choice.”
“Who did it, then?”
“Mr. Greatorex. This must be remedied at once, sir.”
By the authoritative manner in which he spoke, it might have been thought that Bede Greatorex was the servant, Brown the master. Bede put his elbow on the shelf again, and pushed back his hair in unmistakable agitation. It was growing thin now, the once luxuriant crop; and silver threads were interwoven with the black ones.
“She must be saved,” repeated Mr. Brown.
“I suppose so. Who is to do it?”
“I must, sir. If no one else does.”
Bede raised his eyes to glance at his clerk; but it was not a full free glance, and they were instantly dropped again.
“You are the Godfrey Pitman, they tell me, who was in the house at the time.”
“Yes, I am. But have you not known it all along, Mr. Bede Greatorex?”
“All
along from when?”
Mr. Brown hesitated. “From the time that I came here as clerk.”
“No; certainly I have not.”
“There were times, sir, when I fancied it.”
A long silence. Even now, whatever secret, or association, there might be between these two men, neither was at ease with the other. Bede especially seemed to shrink from further explanation.
“I have known but for a short while of your identity with Godfrey Pitman,” he resumed. “And with George Winter. I have been waiting my own time to confer with you upon the subject. We have been very busy.”
We have been very busy! If Bede put that forth as an excuse, it did not serve him: for his hearer knew it was not the true one. He simply answered that they had been very busy. Not by so much as a look or a syllable would George Winter — let us at last give him his true name — add to the terrible pain he knew his master must be suffering.
“About Miss Rye, sir? She must be extricated from her unpleasant position.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And her innocence proved.”
“At the expense of another?” asked Bede, without lifting his eyes.
“No,” answered the other in a low tone. “I do not think that need be.”
Bede looked straight into the fire, his companion full at the window-blind, drawn half way down; neither of them at one another.
“How will you avoid it?” asked Bede.
“I think it may be avoided, sir. For a little while past, I have forseen that some such a crisis as this would come: and I have dwelt and dwelt upon it until I seem to be able to track out my way in it perfectly clear.”
Bede cracked the coal in the grate; which did not require cracking. “Do you mean that you have foreseen Miss Rye would be taken? Such a thought in regard to her never crossed my mind.”
“Nor mine. I alluded to myself, sir. If once I was discovered to be the so-called Godfrey Pitman — and some instinct told me the discovery was at last approaching — I knew that I should, in all probability, be charged with the murder of Mr. Ollivera. I — an innocent man — would not suffer for this, Mr. Greatorex; I should be obliged, in self-defence, to repel the accusation: and I have been considering how it might be done without compromising others. I think it can be.”
“How?” repeated Bede shortly.
“By my not telling the whole truth. By not knowing — I mean not having recognised the — the one — who would be compromised if I did tell it. I think this is feasible, sir.”
Just a momentary glance into each other’s eyes; no more; and it spoke volumes. Bede, facing the fire again, stood several minutes in deep consideration. George Winter seemed occupied with one of his gloves that had a refractory button.
“In any case it must now be known who you are,” said Bede.
“That will not signify. In throwing the onus of the—” he seemed to hesitate, as he had once hesitated in the last sentence— “the death off Miss Rye, I throw it equally off my own shoulders. I have for some months wished that I could declare myself.”
“Why have you not done it?”
George Winter looked at his master, surprise in his eyes. “It is not for my own sake that I have kept concealed, sir.”
No. Bede Greatorex knew that it was for his; at least for his interests; and felt the obligation in his heart. He did not speak it; pride and a variety of other unhappy feelings kept him silent. Of all the miserable moments that the death of John Ollivera had entailed upon him, this confidential interview with his clerk was not the least of them. Forced though he was to hold it, he hated it with his whole soul.
“You took that cheque from my desk,” said Bede. “And wrote me the subsequent letter.”
“I did not take it from the desk, sir. Your expressed and continuous belief — that you had put it in — was a mistaken one. It must have slipped from your hands when about to lock up the other papers you held, and fluttered under the desk-table. Perhaps you will allow me to give you the explanation now.”
Bede nodded.
“In the morning of the day that the cheque was lost, you may remember coming into the front room and seeing a stranger with me. His name was Foster; a farmer and corn-dealer near Birmingham. I had been out on an errand; and, on turning in again, a gentleman stopped me to enquire the way. While I was directing him there ensued a mutual recognition. In one sense I owed him some money: forty-four pounds. Samuel Teague, of whom you may have heard—”
“I know,” interrupted Bede.
“Samuel Teague, just before he ran away, had got me to put my name to a bill for him; Mr. Foster, in all good faith, had let him have the money for it. It had never been repaid. But upon Mr. Foster’s meeting me that morning, he gave me my choice — to find the money for him before he left London, or be denounced publicly as George Winter. I thought he would have denounced me then. He came into the office and would not be got rid of: saying that he had looked for me too long to let me go, now that I was found. What I was to do I did not know. I had no objection to resume my own name, for I had cleared myself with Johnson and Teague, but it must have involved the exposure relating to the affair at Helstonleigh. The thought occurred to me of declaring the dilemma to you, letting you decide whether that exposure should come, or whether you would lend me the forty-four pounds to avert it But I shrank from doing that.”
“Why?” again interposed Bede.
“Because I thought you would dislike my entering upon the subject, sir. I have shrunk from it always.
Now that the necessity is forced upon me, I am shrinking from it as I speak.”
Ah, but not so much as Bede was. “Go on.”
“While I sat at my desk, inwardly deliberating, Mr. Frank came in, asking you to draw out a cheque for Sir Richard Yorke for forty-four pounds. The strange coincidence between the sum and the money demanded of me, struck me as being most singular. It strikes me so still. Later in the morning, I came into this room with some deeds, and saw a piece of paper lying under the table. Upon picking it up — which I did simply to replace it on the desk — I found it was the cheque. My first thought was that it must be a special, almost a supernatural, intervention in my favour; my second, that it was just possible you had left it there for me to take. Both ideas very farfetched and imaginatory, as I saw at once. But I used the cheque, Mr. Bede Greatorex. I went home, put on the false hair I had worn as Godfrey Pitman, for I have it by me still, and got the cheque cashed in gold. It was not for my sake I did this; I hated it bitterly. And then I hesitated to use the money. At night I went to Mr. Foster’s hotel, and told him that I would get the money for him by the following night if I could; if I could not, he must carry out his threat of denouncing me to the public and Mr. Greatorex. Foster consented to wait. I returned to my lodgings and wrote that anonymous note to you, sir, not telling you who had taken the cheque; merely saying that exposure was threatened of the private circumstances, known only to one or two, attendant on Mr. Ollivera’s death at Helstonleigh; that the money had been taken to avert the exposure, and would be applied to that purpose, provided you were agreeable. If not, and you wished the money returned, you were requested to drop a note without loss of a moment to a certain address: if no such note were written, the money would be used in the course of the day, and things kept silent as heretofore. You sent no answer, and I paid it to Foster in the evening. I have never been able to decide whether you suspected me as the writer, or not.”
“No. I fancied it might be Hurst.”
“Hurst!” exclaimed George Winter in great surprise.
Bede looked up for a moment. “I felt sure the cheque must have been taken by one of you in the next room. Not knowing you then for Godfrey Pitman, my thoughts fell on Hurst. His father was the attendant surgeon, and might have made some critical discovery.”
“I don’t see how he could have done that, sir,” was the dissenting answer.
“Nor did I. But it is the doubt in these cases that causes the fear. I shou
ld like to ask you a question — was it by accident or purposed design that you came to our house as a clerk?”
“Purely by accident. When the misfortunes fell upon me in Birmingham, and I was unwise enough to follow Samuel Teague’s example and run away, I retained one friend, who stood by me. After quitting Helstonleigh on the Monday night, I concealed myself elsewhere for three or four days, and then went to him in Essex, where he lived. He procured me a clerkship in a lawyer’s office in the same county, Mr. Cale’s, with whom I stayed about a year, Mr. Cale found me very useful, and when his health failed, and he retired in consequence from practice, he sent me up here to Mr. Greatorex with a strong recommendation.”
“You have served us well,” said Bede. “Was not your quitting Birmingham a mistake?”
“The worst I ever made. I solemnly declare that I was entirely innocent. Not only innocent myself, but unsuspicious of anything wrong on the part of Samuel Teague. He took me in, as he took in everybody else. Johnson and Teague know it now, and have at length done me the justice to acknowledge it. I knew of young Teague’s profuse expenditure: he used to tell me he had the money from his uncle, old Mr. Teague, and it never occurred to me to doubt it. Where I erred, was in going to the old man and blurting out the truth. He died of the shock. I shall never forgive myself for that: it seemed to me always as though I had murdered him. With his dead form, as it seemed, pursuing me, with the knowledge that I was to be included in the charge of forgery, I lost my sober senses. In my fright, I saw no escape but in flight; and I got away on the Sunday afternoon as far as Helstonleigh. It was in the opposite direction to the one Samuel Teague was thought to have taken, and I wanted to see Alletha Rye, if it were practicable, and assure her before we finally parted, that, though bad enough, I was not quite the villain people were making me out to be. There — there are strange coincidences in this life, Mr. Bede Greatorex.”
“You may well say that,” answered Bede.
“And one of the strangest was that of my accidentally meeting Alletha Rye five minutes after I reached Helstonleigh. Forgetting my disguise, I stopped to accost her — and have not forgotten her surprise yet. But I had not courage then to tell her the truth: I simply said I was in trouble through false friends, and was ill — which was really the case — and I asked her if she could shelter me for a day or two, or could recommend me to a place where I might be private and to myself. The result was, that I went to Mrs. Jones’s house, introduced as a stranger, one Godfrey Pitman. I hit upon the name hap-hazard. And before I left it I was drawn into that business concerning Mr. Ollivera.”