“I’ll put it in hand at once,” he said. “Now for the second affair—”
“Yes.”
Mark, however, found it a little difficult to approach that second affair. He twisted in his chair.
“Yes,” he said, and again “Yes.”
Sir William offered him a cigarette, which he lit absently and allowed to go out. Such agitations were the daily food of Hawker, Hawker & Lyndhurst. Sir William waited patiently.
“You are no doubt accustomed to make discreet inquiries,” Thewliss asked at last.
“Discretion is our long suit, Mr. Thewliss.”
“The information I want might be difficult to obtain. The affair is altogether delicate. My last data are fourteen years old.”
Sir William smiled cheerfully.
“I thought for a moment that you were going to give me something really difficult to do. Tell me all about it.”
Sir William had the soothing manner of a fashionable physician. Nothing could seriously go wrong with you once you had handed yourself over to Hawker, Hawker & Lyndhurst. Mark Thewliss was encouraged.
“It’s about a woman,” he blurted out.
“It usually is,” said Sir William.
“I haven’t seen her for fourteen years.”
“That, too, I gathered.”
Sir William’s estimate of his fellow-men was not very high. Women who looked like angels behaved like sluts, and hard-headed men were no better than fools. He looked at Mark and correctly appraised his age. When he was thirty-one Mark had run up his little bill at Cupid & Co., and no doubt it was now being presented with a considerable addition for compound interest.
“And the lady’s charms being now upon the wane, she is relying for support upon blackmail,” he said easily; and he had hardly come to the end of his cynicism before he realised that he had made as ugly a blunder as a shrewd lawyer could make.
For Mark was really shocked.
“Oh no!” he cried, “I am not asking you to dig up a woman’s history and find something which will keep her mouth closed. In this case there is nothing you could find.”
The girl with the big dark eyes and the copper-coloured hair who, during one month of suspense and anxiety, had given him all she had to give and had asked for nothing in return, was vividly invoked by the lawyer’s sneer.
“I have never even heard from her during these years. But I want to make sure that the world has gone well with her, and if it hasn’t, to know that it hasn’t, so that I may do what I can to put things right.”
Sir William glanced at his client curiously, and Mark flushed under the glance.
“You mustn’t think that I am a sentimentalist, because I’m not,” he exclaimed hotly.
“I should require a deal more evidence before I brought you into the dock on that charge,” Hawker answered dryly. “After all, let us not forget that I have already transacted business for you.”
Mark Thewliss was mollified. It was true, to be sure, that he had acted upon an impulse when he ordered his chauffeur to drive to Ely Place instead of to Brooke’s Market. But sentimentality had nothing to do with it. Sentimental impulses have a way of dying the moment after they are acted upon. But Mark was conscious that were he driving along Oxford Street again, he would nevertheless be sitting again in this office in a few minutes’ time. For he was quite clear in his mind as to whence the impulse had sprung and why it had mastered him.
The life at Gissens was the cause — its friendliness and good-humour and freedom from anything common or mean. A man pushing ruthlessly through the world had stopped in front of a mirror, and had seen himself for the first time and was surprised to discover that there were points in his appearance which he disliked.
“I did a mean and graceless thing,” he confessed to himself, “when I left Mona Lightfoot at Southampton and never bothered my head so much as to send her a post card afterwards. What would those people say — Angela, Olivia Stanton, Tony Westram, yes, and Derek Crayle too — if they knew? Hairy-heeled, eh?”
Mark winced in the lawyer’s room as he saw the horrible words framed contemptuously by those four pairs of lips. Upper Theign would never have been mentioned to him. Much less would he have been pressed to buy it. He had a conviction that he could never meet any of that family again on equal terms until he had repaid so far as he could repay. He had even a feeling that he would have no ease in any marriage unless he knew that Mona Lightfoot was in no straits or distress.
“I have imagined myself as a man of magnificence,” he reflected, taking himself to task. “But magnificent men make sure that those who have helped them shall not know misery.”
He saw Mona Lightfoot kicking her long legs over the cockpit and plying him for recitations according to Henry Irving. He showed her the great stone ball on Durlstone Head; he swung seawards from the little lighthouse with the chocolate band whilst she watched the bubbles on the oily slabs of Portland Race; he picnicked with her again on the top of King Charles’ bomb-proof fort at the edge of an outer island of the Scillies. But whatever picture rose before his mind, was painted in the colours of reproach.
He gave Sir William the particulars.
Mona Lightfoot — clerk and stenographer at Mardyke and Campion’s just fifteen years ago — the staff reduced in the late autumn because Mardyke had no courage — Mona Lightfoot’s efficiency secured her other employment at once.
“In London?” asked Sir William.
“No. In Liverpool.”
“Her age at that date?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Who employed her at Liverpool?”
“I don’t know.”
Sir William lifted his shoulders.
“Mona Lightfoot may be dead or married, and Liverpool isn’t a village. She may have left Liverpool. She may be in the United States or anywhere. The problem isn’t after all so easy of solution as I thought,” said Sir William “For such inquiries we generally go to the specialists.”
“Meaning — ?” Mark Thewliss asked.
“A good firm of inquiry agents.”
Mark received the suggestion with such evident distaste that Sir William hastened to elaborate it.
“The firm I had in mind was Dickson’s. They have done a good deal of work for us, and I think I can say always with success.”
“A great deal of discretion would be required,” Mark Thewliss objected.
A brave submission to inevitable things had been the fine and lovable mark of Mona Lightfoot — a noble humility. But there had been pride in that humility. He had never written once to her, and therefore she had never written once to him. It would be very difficult, after these long years of silence, to persuade her into the acceptance of the smallest quittance. He owed a debt. Yes! But what if the creditor refused to acknowledge that a debt was owed? He would have to walk very daintily.
“The condition of the search is secrecy — absolute secrecy,” Mark insisted. “If you find Mona Lightfoot, Mona Lightfoot mustn’t know that she has been found, mustn’t know that anyone has been searching for her, above all that I have been searching for her. Is that clear?”
“Quite,” said Sir William.
“Very well, then! Let Dickson’s put their very best man on to this inquiry. If he’s clumsy he spoils everything. Then when he has found out the facts — where she is, whether life is kindly to her — then, without one suspicion occurring to her, let him come back to me!”
He rose from his chair and picked up his hat and his stick.
“I’ll send for the head of Dickson’s to come and see me this afternoon,” said Sir William, as he shook hands with his client. He was thinking: “What queer birds men are when you get to know them!”
* * * * *
During the next seven weeks Mark had little leisure for either reproaches or speculations upon the outcome of his search. For the second time he was enlarging the firm’s laboratories at the back of Brooke’s Market. He sat in his place in the House of Commons; he condu
cted his business; he stayed again with Tony Westram and strengthened his friendship with that pleasant family; and he completed the purchase of Upper Theign, drawing a cheque for forty-seven thousand pounds in the office of Sir William Hawker on an afternoon at the end of July.
Three days later Sir William rang him up on the telephone.
“Dickson’s man has returned,” he said. “He has the information you want. His name’s Joseph Wyatt. When shall I send him to you?”
“This evening at nine-thirty. I shall be at Grosvenor Street,” replied Mark; and for the rest of that day he paid very little attention to his business.
XII. MR. WYATT APPEARS
THEWLISS SUFFERED A little shock when Mr. Joseph Wyatt was introduced into his library. He expected someone with the stamp of his vocation, a being saturnine and hawklike with the tread of a cat. He saw instead a squat, squarish man with a heavy red moustache, commonplace and vulgarian to the broad toes of his boots.
“It is you whom Dickson’s sent on this rather delicate errand!” Mark cried.
Mr. Joseph Wyatt was at all events quick enough to recognise an accent of discontent.
“It was I, Mr. Thewliss,” he replied. “I have the advantage of looking like a very ordinary commercial traveller. Nobody ever turns round to wonder who I am.”
Mark was relieved by the rebuke. Mr. Wyatt, it seemed, was not such a dunce as he appeared to be.
“Besides, you have the information, I understand,” Mark continued. “Won’t you sit down and give it to me?”
Mr. Wyatt sat down, put his hat on the floor and drew from his pocket a paper written over in a shorthand of his own.
“The investigation has occupied a long time, Mr. Thewliss,” he began by way of a preface. “But Liverpool is a city of a million people and I had no starting-point provided for me. It was a matter of routine. I made inquiries of the police, the employment agencies, the registers of churches and chapels, the newspaper files, the various political lists of canvassers and helpers, and what I may call the social album. Everywhere I drew a blank. There remained the laundries.”
“Ingenious,” said Mark Thewliss.
“Excuse me,” Mr. Wyatt answered. “Laundries are of the routine of my profession. But searching amongst them for a name which may or may not have been borne upon the books fourteen years ago is a slow process, especially for a man who has no authority behind him and must be careful to provoke as little curiosity as possible.”
Mark nodded his head.
“What excuse did you use?”
“A possible inheritance.”
“Wouldn’t that be likely to reach the ears of the person concerned?”
“I think not, Mr. Thewliss. I urged that hopes should not be raised prematurely. I understand that not a word has been breathed.”
“Good!” said Mark Thewliss.
Mr. Wyatt cast his eyes upon his paper, and translated.
“Mona Lightfoot married her employer, Henry Perriton, an accountant, on the 26th of November, 1895, at St. Mark’s Church, New Brighton.”
“Eighteen ninety-five?” Thewliss exclaimed.
“Yes, sir.”
“You are sure?”
“I myself saw the entry in the parish register.”
A wry sort of smile twisted Mark’s lips. Ninety-five was the year in which Mona Lightfoot had gone cruising on the Sea Flower. It had not taken her long to forget that intimate month. He had said goodbye to her at Southampton and she had just skipped back to Liverpool and in eight weeks she was married. The knowledge was a sharp little stab to his pride. No wonder that he winced and grimaced for a second or two. It seemed that he was not wanted to play the part of Father Christmas.
“Mr. Perriton is in easy circumstances, I suppose?” he said.
Mr. Wyatt shrugged his shoulders.
“So, so. He’s in a small way of business. A little pinched, I should think.”
Mark sat forward in his chair. The little throb of resentment was felt by him no more. Pinched was a horrible word. He remembered his beautiful toy, the Sea Flower, and how Mona Lightfoot had adored it, and how for a month her lovely face and young supple body had graced it. And now as she grew to middle-age she was pinched.
“Where do the Perritons live?” he asked.
“At Glebe Villa, Acacia Grove.”
Mark almost shuddered. Such an address! Genteel poverty was expressed in every syllable of it. He saw Mona Lightfoot clapping her hands together half-way across the West Bay and crying: “I have never been out of sight of land before,” in an ecstasy of delight.
Had she ever been out of sight of it since? She had had a sort of prescience, too, that the glowing wonders of that summer voyage were never to be repeated in her lifetime; so thoughtfully had she stored up each detail in the lavender of her memories. And now — Glebe Villa, Acacia Grove, with perhaps a week at Southport in August, if some little windfall of business had come in Mr. Perriton’s way!
“They have lived there since their marriage?” Mark asked discontentedly.
The name of the house and the street worried him ridiculously. Dreary respectability, comfortless decorum, clothes which were threadbare — he found connotations for them by the dozen.
“Oh no, sir,” Mr. Wyatt replied. “For the first ten years Mr. and Mrs. Perriton lived a few miles out of the city in the direction of Hoylake. Four years ago, however, they moved nearer in to Glebe Villa.”
“Nearer to Perriton’s work?”
“No, sir. Nearer to a High School,” said Mr. Wyatt; and Mark sat staring at his visitor and very still.
“What’s that?” he asked at length in a curiously toneless and quiet voice.
“Nearer to a High School, sir,” Mr. Wyatt repeated, raising his voice a little. He was under the impression that his explanation had not been heard.
“Why?” Thewliss asked.
“The Perritons have a daughter. She was born in the year after their marriage. She’s growing up now. She goes to school.”
The news was a shock to Mark Thewliss. He felt suddenly very small. Whilst he had been playing with the idea of a daughter, Mona Lightfoot had got one. All his grandeur oozed out of him. He was the wastrel who fritters away the day planning and dreaming about the great poem he is going to write, whilst some other fellow in a garret is writing it. The girl was growing up too. She would be soon at the adorable age — Angela’s age. Mona had outdistanced him by years, and since he had only one life he could never catch her up.
“A daughter!” he murmured in a wondering voice, as though a miracle had been revealed to him instead of a perfectly simple, likely, and natural process of nature. “What’s her name?”
“Lois,” said Mr. Wyatt.
“Fanciful!” Mark Thewliss exclaimed petulantly. He had never thought of “Lois” as a name. Phyllises and Sylvias, yes, but not Loises. And it was an attractive name too. The more attractive it looked and sounded, the more he was at that moment inclined to resent it. Then he laughed at himself. He had that wholesome gift.
“After all, why shouldn’t they call their daughter Lois, if they like the name?” he inquired. “Does she match it? Is she pretty?”
“Takes after the mother, Mr. Thewliss.”
“Then she is.”
Mr. Wyatt pulled at his dragoon’s moustache and reflected deeply.
“I am not much of a judge of female beauty, sir. I take to the ruddy and plump myself. But I understand that Miss Lois is considered in Acacia Grove rather a crasher. Same big dark eyes and coppery hair as her mother. Tall and slim too, and distant like an aristocrat. Yes, sir, that’s the general view, a crasher. Not what I should call homey, but a crasher.”
Mark laughed cordially. He had got used to the knowledge that Mona had outdistanced him. And since she had a daughter, he was delighted that she should be a crasher.
“I must look after them a bit,” he said to himself. “I must see if I can’t put some work in Perriton’s way.” And the thought that he mig
ht protect from afar the fortunes of that small family in Liverpool quite restored his heart.
“They are all happy together?” he asked.
“I should say so,” Mr. Wyatt returned. “You will remember, of course, that your instructions were very precise, Mr. Thewliss. It was essential that the Perritons should never have a suspicion that any inquiry about them was being made. My investigations, therefore, into so delicate a matter as the domestic relationship of the parties were circumscribed.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Thewliss agreed.
“So I never came into actual contact with the Perritons. But from all the indications I could gather, there’s nothing amiss at all. Mr. Perriton comes home regularly to Glebe Villa when his work is done, Mrs. Perriton runs the house as well as their straitened means allow, and if there is any need, gives at times some help in the office. There is one general servant who has been with them for a long while, and so far as I could discover she tells no stories of squabbles and rows. There’s really no gossip about them at all. They make up just the ordinary unnoticeable household of people who are a little—” and Mark Thewliss intervened in a hurry.
“Yes, yes, I understand,” he said rising from his chair. He had no wish to hear that grim word “pinched” applied again to his joyous companion of the Sea Flower. “Now I want you to keep me discreetly in touch with that family. I want you to go up to Liverpool once every three months, see how things are going, without of course in any way revealing your mission, and report to me on your return. Can you do that for me?”
“Quite,” said Mr. Wyatt.
Mark Thewliss held out his hand.
“And for what you have done, I am very grateful,” Thewliss continued. “I shall tell Messrs. Hawker, Hawker, and Lyndhurst that I am more than satisfied.”
“I thank you, sir,” said Mr. Wyatt, and he picked up his hat. “I am glad to have been of service, but the work really only needed care. It was routine.”
It was unfortunate that Mark Thewliss did not pay a little more attention to the limitations of routine. Routine was at once Mr. Wyatt’s strength and his weakness. Indefatigable in the tracing of facts, he failed in his estimate of people. Mark, impressed by his painstaking research, was misled into accepting comfortably his judgment of the Perriton household. He could no doubt put some work in Henry Perriton’s way, and that apparently was as all that was needed. Upper Theign, marriage, a daughter — his way was clear in front of him and unclouded with reproach. He went to bed that night with a light heart.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 596