The Victorian Villains Megapack (26 page)

Dear Fernhurst,

I enclose fifty tenners as you ask, but you must distinctly understand this sort of thing can’t go on. If you had only been careful, the brute could never have blackmailed me like this, I shall have to knock it off your next few cheques, as my balance will be nearly gone. Look out whom you choose to mind John, in future. Better come and see me as soon as you have got rid of Jenkinson and matters have
shaken down a bit
.

Yours, Percy.

Arrived at his chambers at Furnival’s Inn, Mr. Pringle’s first care was to dispense with his whiskers and resume his official port-wine mark. Then he devoted the rest of the day to the concoction of two letters which would fire the train he had just laid. This was the first:—

Axford.

Dear Windrush,

I packed Jenkinson off with his five hundred pounds the day but one after Bonting saw you. When he had gone I took a look round his room, and found some tom-up paper which I had the curiosity to piece together. The skunk seems to have been playing a double game. So far as I could make out he has told old Toddington, and there was something about payment for making a statutory declaration for a warrant for conspiracy! Whatever this means, I think it better to take a holiday at your expense. Join me at Grand Hotel, Paris.

In haste, yours,

Arthur Fernhurst.

And this the second:

Dear Fernhurst,

Communicate with me through “Standard,” col. 2. I leave for the Continent at once, and should advise you to ditto. Just discovered that old Toddington has got wind of everything, and employed a detective who saw John the other day when you were out. T. intends to apply for warrant for conspiracy You can join me in Paris in a few days, when we can see how matters are going.

Yours,

Percy.

* * * *

“The flowers are beautiful,” commented Pringle. “It was certainly very kind of Mr. Windrush to send them all this way. Is this your first visit to London?”

“Farst time, sir; an’ beggin’ yar pardon, it bates me how people live here. Fared’s ef I couldn’t brathe in them streets.”

“So you’re back in Mr. Windrush’s service?” said Pringle, as he finished his note of thanks.

“O—o, I were rale glad to get back agin to th’ oo’d place! I could ha’ jumped outer my skin when master asked me to come back’s head-gardener. I felt that horrud shut in th’ bar all day, an’ fawther were a-gettin’ tired o’ doin’ nothin’ and thought he’d like te work for a yare or tew more.”

“But I thought the place was let.”

“They went oof end o’ las month. Master wouldn’t ’new th’ lease, as he were a-livin’ ’long o’ Dr. Toddington till they went.”

“Then things are just as they were before?”

“Same ivery way, sir—’ceptin’ won!” The youth grinned knowingly.

“What’s that?”

“Mr. Percy! Thorpe Stanlowe’ll see him noo more. I hard he’d gone abroad fur fear they’d put him in Norwich Castle fur makin’ tew free with th’ money while master were ’way. Guilty conscience most-like!”

“Very probably!” agreed Pringle. “Then I shan’t find you at the inn if I come down for any more yachting.”

“Oo, fawther’ll be glad to see yew an’ len’ yew th’ cutter. Thank yew kindly, sir—my best respec’s te yew, sir!”

Romney Pringle in THE PA
STE DIAMONDS

Mr. Romney Pringle was hunting through a portfolio of engravings in the afternoon.

One of the old prints which lightened the warm distemper of the sitting-room walls had just been summarily displaced. The cord breaking, it had reached the floor a complete wreck, a flower-bowl overturned in the descent having poured its cascade across the broken glass to the utter ruin of the print beneath. A substitute was required, and finding a worthy successor in a ‘Diogenes’ of Salvator Rosa, engraved in laborious but beautiful line, Pringle was about to replace the portfolio when there came a knock at the outer door. Rising, he admitted a tall, slightly-stooping, grey-haired gentleman of spare habit, who seized his unresisting hand and shook it warmly.

“Why, surely you haven’t forgotten me!” exclaimed the stranger, desisting as he observed a stony expression to gather over the face of his host. Pringle started, while his features relaxed into the winning smile which so ably seconded the magnetism of his address.

“What! Can it be Mr. Windrush?”

“Why, of course it is! But how stupid of me!—I ought to have remembered that you’ve only met me once before, and at that time I looked rather different from what I am now.”

“Not so very different,” was Pringle’s tactful reply. “You certainly bore up manfully under a strain which would have crushed most people.”

“Ah, that miserable Asylum! I shall never forget it, nor the way I was made to appear insane. And above all, I shall never forget the noble manner in which you worked for my release after you discovered the villainy of my brother and his accomplice.”

“You have already thanked me beyond my deserts. Pray let us talk of something else. How kind of you to come and visit me!”

“Well, you’ve never come and seen me all this time, so I came to see if you were still alive!”

“You see my time is so much occupied with my work as a literary agent that my visits to any friends are necessarily angelic,” and Pringle, with calm mendacity, waved his hands towards the empty bureau.

“Well, I’ve come now to ask your advice, and, if you can suggest it, your help.”

“If you think my advice worth having, I shall be only too pleased to give it to you, but I’m afraid you rather over-rate my powers.”

“Ah, I see you’ve all the modesty of true genius. But I won’t waste time with compliments. Well now, a cousin of mine lives near me; her husband is head of one of the oldest families in our county, and I have always been on very affectionate terms with her. Well, I’m sorry to say she has lately got in with a rather fast set, and being in pressing need of about a thousand pounds, she took a very fine diamond star, which is a sort of family heirloom, to some West-end jewellers who do that sort of thing, and got an advance, and as she didn’t want her husband to know anything about it, she got these people to make her a facsimile in paste. About a week or two ago, she found the central stone had dropped out. The jewellers said they couldn’t replace it in under a week, and she was at her wit’s end, for they were entertaining a party of friends, and her husband would have wondered if she had never worn the diamonds all the time. Well, the jewellers suggested letting her have the real star, on hire for fifty pounds, until the sham stone was replaced, but they insisted on her giving them a cheque for the thousand they had lent her with interest, they agreeing to hold it over and return it to her when she returned the real diamonds. So she wore the star once or twice for the look of the thing, and then put it away. After the party broke up yesterday, she found to her horror the jewel-case was empty. She says it had been opened at the hinges.”

“Ah, yes! By driving out the pins.”

“That’s it, Well, she was in despair. The jewellers would present the cheque if she didn’t return the star; as she hadn’t got more than a hundred or two at the bank, it would be dishonoured; and then her husband would learn the whole affair in the most disagreeable manner possible. Yesterday, she drove over to my place, and told me all, so I offered to lend her the money, and I came to town this morning and got her cheque back together with the paste. But we want to recover the real stones, and as she dreads having anything to do with the police—as you may suppose—I have come to ask your advice.”

“Were there any traces of a burglary?”

“So far as I understand her, none. But it is possible that an expert might have found them.”

“It seems to me,” observed Pringle, “that the theft of an article so easily traceable, and so difficult to dispose of, could only be the work of a very stupid amateur, or of a very clever thief. Since the affair was managed so neatly, we are forced back on the latter alternative. Now an experienced jewel-thief would soon dispose of the stones, so it’s doubtful if you’ll ever see them again in the same form.”

“Would you like to see the facsimile?”

“Of all things! Have you got it here?”

For reply Windrush drew a black leather case from his pocket, and opening it, displayed on a bed of blue velvet, what appeared to be a diamond star of such dazzling lustre as to deceive any eye but that of an expert.

“Very nice indeed,” commented Pringle. “Evidently the work of a first-class artist. Would you have any objection to leaving it with me?”

“How long will you want to keep it?”

“It’s rather how long can your cousin spare it?”

“Well, her husband is going for two or three weeks’ yachting, so she can safely spare it for that time.”

“That will do nicely,” said Pringle, adding as the other rose to go, “Are you returning to Norfolk today?”

“No. I was afraid I mightn’t catch you in, so I took a bed at the Great Eastern. Besides, it’s gone six now, so I should have had to stop over-night in any case.”

“If you are willing I should like to accompany you so far. By the bye, I was going to speak to you on rather a painful subject. Your brother Percy—have you heard anything of him lately?”

“As you say, it
is
a painful subject! In return for nothing but kindness from me, to not only make me appear insane, but to nearly drive me so in reality! You know, Mr. Pringle, no one better, what I suffered. I don’t think I’m a vindictive man, but I feel that I cannot, at all events at present, hold any communication with him. My cousin saw him recently. Indeed, I understand he was staying with them last week, for although people know we are not on speaking terms, I think I have managed to keep the real reason a secret.”

“No, there is nothing to be gained by washing your dirty linen in public.”

“Do you think,” Windrush said, as they stood an hour later in the vestibule of the hotel, “do you think it would help you to run down and take a look at the place? I am sure my cousin would be pleased to see you, and I need hardly say how delighted I shall be to put you up.”

“Not just at present, thank you,” declined Pringle; “I should like to do so eventually, and whilst I think of it I’ll just go and get a time-table. Good-bye for the present. You mustn’t be disappointed if you don’t hear anything of me for a week or so.”

Descending the sloping approach, Pringle entered the station. It was nearing half-past seven, and there was much bustle antecedent to the starting of the eight o’clock boat express, Having purchased his time-table, Pringle was about to return, when a hubbub arose by the booking-office, and he lingered a moment to listen.

“I tell yer, the cab stopped at my pitch! The eight-continental, ain’t it, sir?”

“The gent ’anded the bag to me, didn’t yer, sir? An’ yer sez second class fur ’Arridge.”

Two porters, very much in the attitude of the mothers in the judgment of Solomon as usually depicted, had seized the opposite ends of a Gladstone bag, whilst the owner, a burly, somewhat bloated individual, stood grasping a hold-all, in detached amusement at the scene. The contest merged into an East-End picturesqueness of abuse, when one of the men, espying an elderly lady possessed of a large quantity of luggage as yet unappropriated, abruptly raised the siege, and dropping the bag, went in pursuit of this more desirable client.

The appearance of the traveller was commonplace enough, but, as he moved off under the wing of the victorious porter, Pringle felt certain he had seen him before, and not so very long ago either. Staring absently after the man, he turned over in his mind all the likely and most of the unlikely places where they could have met, till a spasm of reminiscence showed him a luxuriously-furnished set of chambers. It was 256 Piccadilly of course, and equally of course the traveller was Percy Windrush! Harwich by the eight o’clock boat express! Pringle found himself wondering where on earth Percy could be going to. His objective could only be Rotterdam, but that was not a pleasure resort, while the slenderness of his luggage was incompatible with a more extended continental tour. He felt a sense of irritation against Percy for worrying him with such a problem. He turned impatiently to go, but suddenly stopped as a chance remark of John Windrush blazed vividly in his recollection—“My cousin saw him recently…he was staying with them last week.”

Pringle sat down to reflect. This was the situation, it seemed. Percy’s failure to keep his brother in an asylum, and their consequent rupture had deprived him of an easy means of livelihood. He was, no doubt, hard put to it for money, and unlikely to stop at anything to obtain it. He would know the way about his cousin’s house, he could choose his opportunity, while his relationship would shield him from any suspicion. What more likely than that he had taken the diamonds, and if so, was now on his way to dispose of them? Pringle looked up the time-table. The boat was due at Rotterdam the next morning. At the very outside, to follow Percy to the Continent and back would not take more than three days, and he decided that the clue was worth following up. A bell clanged furiously. There was no time to lose, and the question of luggage had to be considered! Just by the booking-office stood one of those convenient toilet-establishments where hair-cutting and shaving are combined with the provision of travellers’ requisites. Entering, he made a hurried investment, and emerged the richer by a bag packed with toilet and sleeping necessaries. Then, booking a through-passage to Rotterdam, he took his seat in the train a few seconds before it started. On arriving at Parkestone Quay he just obtained a glimpse of Percy Windrush hurrying, the first of all, on board the packet, where he promptly disappeared below, and as the night had set in dark and stormy, Pringle followed his example and was soon fast asleep.

The North Sea was in anything but a propitious mood when he awoke. The ‘Hook of Holland’ route was not then in existence, and the crossing which, as a general rule, averaged twelve hours, now bid fair to lengthen into sixteen. It was a prolonged agony to the majority of the passengers, to whom the arrival and passing of the breakfast-hour had proved an event of no interest. Few but Pringle had dared to brave the wet and draughty horrors of the upper-deck, and it was only as the steamer entered the Maas, and Rotterdam with its wilderness of trees and masts appeared in sight, that a limp and draggled procession emerged from the saloon. As the deck filled, Pringle ceased his promenade and drew towards the rearmost rank. Nosing her way through the maze of shipping, the steamer slowly passed to her berth beside the Hull and Dunkirk packets, and was neatly moored alongside the tree-planted Boompjes where the shadows were already beginning to lengthen. The formalities of the Customs had been completed in the stream, and the crowd rapidly thinned and dispersed as the passengers streamed up the gangways on to grateful
terra firma
.

Percy was almost the last to appear, having remained below throughout; Pringle remembered that he was said to be a seasoned sailor, so he could hardly have stopped there on account of the prevalent malady. Recalling the historical precedent of Nelson only to dismiss it as inapplicable, he felt sure that Percy’s reason for enduring such undoubted personal inconvenience could only have arisen from a desire to escape observation, and was more than ever determined not to lose sight of him. Pringle had little fear of being recognized himself. Although he had had no opportunity of removing his official port-wine mark as the putative literary agent, Percy would scarcely recognize, even if he remembered, the whiskered asylum-attendant in the slim, clean-shaven figure in the lounge-suit who followed him.

Resisting the siren importunities of the hotel touts, Pringle briskly strode across the elm-planted quay. He found Percy had already crossed the Scheepmaker’s Haven by one of the innumerable swing-bridges of the city, and was upon another which spanned the Wijn Haven. Pringle followed, and Percy took the direction of the central railway-station. Beyond the Bourse he turned to the left towards the fish-market, and crossing the Zoete Bridge, passed by the Boijmann Gallery, and struck up Zand Straat. Block succeeded block along the street, and Pringle began to wonder when the promenade would end, when suddenly Percy dived down a turning on the right labelled Spoorweg Straat, which led towards the Delfsche Canal, and ascended the steps of a modest-looking house displaying the legend “Hotel Rotterdamsche.”

As Pringle withdrew for a space into Zand Straat, he noted that his pursuit had landed him in anything but a select quarter of the town. The region of the best hotels and public buildings had been long left behind, and although there were plenty of large houses visible, their aspect was distinctly second-rate. Having waited sufficiently long to avoid any appearance of espionage, Pringle turned back into Spoorweg Straat, and entering the hotel, inquired for accommodation in his native tongue the real lingua franca of the civilized world. For reply the clerk, whose knowledge of English appeared limited, handed him a dirty-looking visitors’-book. Pringle took up a pen, and glancing at the name last written, read in characters whose faintness indicated recent blotting, “Philip Winter.” Percy had retained his own initials, although for some occult reason he had changed his name. Pringle was studying the signature, when the clerk laid a grimy, impatient finger on the first vacant line, and thus recalled to his surroundings, Pringle boldly signed “John M’Hugh,” as a name well in keeping with the commercial atmosphere in which he found himself.