The burglar wore a loose overcoat (or wraprascal, shall we call it?) with surprise pockets. From these he produced a dark-lantern, whose light he exposed and concentrated on a certain spot, and a couple of electric coils, with a quantity of wire and fixings attached. An electric lamp stuck from the wall (as he had ascertained from observant Gilead) within close reach of the embedded safe. Removing the bulb, he applied the long end of his wire, already fitted with an attachment, to the place, rested one of the coils on the floor, and, placing the other handy for the safe, which he had exposed, rapidly switched on the current, and, picking up the second coil with a pair of insulated tongs, applied it to the front of the safe. In a few moments a smell of warming iron pervaded the spot; the coil grew from pink to red, and the heat became excessive. The safe was of a crude discarded pattern, and unpainted, or the essay would have been fruitless. As it was the door became soon too hot to touch with the hand, and Mr Trimmer was satisfied. Secure of his confederate, however, he gave the experiment plenty of time, and only desisted when its success was beyond question. Then, removing his apparatus, and readjusting everything to its former state, he pocketed his belongings and returned as he had come, making all secure behind him. It is true that he did linger, in some doubt and chagrin, while his coil was cooling.

“To leave it at that!” he thought, disconsolately regarding the safe. “Why it would be easier than picking periwinkles with a pin.”

However, he remembered the hundred pounds and forbore. Honour among thieves.

Passing the hall-door presently, he saw a policeman in discussion with the porter.

“Well, goodnight,” said that officer to his gossip; “and keep your eyeballs skinned.”

The next day Mr Colfox was both surprised and gratified to receive a second visit from his virtuoso client.

“I thought you’d think better of it, sir,” he said. “These Lerroux’s are not to be picked up for the asking.”

“Let me see the bust again, if you please,” said Gilead. His heart was beating a little as the moneylender approached and exposed the safe. He was concerned and relieved in one to observe that it showed no signs of its baking. Mr Colfox opened the door, uttered a sharp exclamation, and fell back a step. But he was too astute a rascal to betray the cause of his agitation. The next moment he had produced the bust, and swung to the door upon his secret.

But not quickly enough for the observant eyes that had followed him. In that moment Gilead had seen the hand, or rather what remained of it—and it was sunk into just a shapeless pancake of wax upon the floor of the safe.

Colfox’s face was a little white, and his lips a little shaky, as he placed the bust on the table.

“There it is, sir,” he said, “and the offer stands.”

Gilead, a stern triumphant light in his eyes, faced him.

“I have changed my mind, sir,” he said. “I desire a deal, but in paper, not in marble. Where is the promissory note you hold in the name of Felix Dobell?”

The moneylender turned momentarily as white as the bust itself, but recovered his nerve, and stood staring, between astonishment and anger.

“What’s this?” he exclaimed. “Who the devil are you?”

“My name, sir,” answered the client, “is Gilead Balm.”

“Gilead—!” the man started back; then fawned in the most fulsome spirit of sycophancy. “Mr Balm!—you—you surprise me, sir.”

“I wish for that paper.”

“You shall have it, sir.” He slunk to the other safe, extracted a note, and returned with it. “You shall have it, sir—I’m sure, sir, to oblige Mr Balm—at the price of the accommodation.”

Gilead accepted the draft and tore it into fifty pieces.

“There is your accommodation, sir,” he said. “I give you what you gave for it—nothing.”

He strode to the door and turned. The other, cowering white and speechless, made no attempt to follow him.

“Your villainy, sir,” said Gilead, “is known and recorded against you. Any further attempt on your part to blackmail the unhappy young man, the victim of this your most cowardly method of persecution, will be made very effectively to recoil upon your own head. All my wealth, sir, all the influence I possess should be devoted to the destruction of a reptile so noisome. You can produce your proofs if you will; they will avail nothing against the truth which has been very clearly exposed in their despite. Think it enough if they serve to defend you in the charge of felony which will most certainly follow your least endeavour to re-set the toils which have been broken. The law, sir, the law is already acquainted with your practices.”

He flung out of the room so violently that he literally floored the anæmic boy, who had been listening at the keyhole. For some minutes after he had gone, the moneylender stood, in a state of semi-stupefaction, looking from one safe to the other. Then, with an explosive sigh, he tottered to the smaller.

“Everything intact,” he whispered; “not a sign of its having been tampered with. It was certainly very warm yesterday, but—damme!” he screamed, “it must have been the ghost of that hot-tempered devil Lerroux himself!”

CHAPTER VIII.
THE QUEST OF THE RED-MOROCCO HANDBAG

Gilead looked up from a perusal of the above advertisement with a twinkle in his eye.

“A young lady again?” said he. “Upon my word I don’t know if I dare to risk the bait a second time.”

“You mean the implied invitation?” answered Miss Halifax, with a smile. “I mustn’t venture to advise, Mr Balm. Your judgments put us all to shame.”

“That’s just it,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil the reputation I made over that Marble Statuette affair. Supposing we divide the responsibility, and invite the advertiser to an interview, at which we will both be present, in this room? We can form our independent opinions, then, and act upon them as each thinks fit. If we differ, the result shall justify the better. Do you agree?”

“O! yes, indeed,” said Miss Halifax. “Nothing could please me more.”

She meant it sincerely, and was gratified by the compromise from every point of view. The glow of pleasure was in the face she raised to Herbert Nestle, who came in at that moment with some correspondence for her. Gilead bent to his desk with a conscious smile. He fancied—recently enlightened as he supposed himself to be—that he could frequently now detect an interchange, between the secretary and amanuensis, of looks of a particular meaning and intelligence. Signs of a closer familiarity in their intercourse than he had hitherto observed often occurred to him, and he had to put force upon himself to avoid the appearance of watching for them. He only awaited, indeed, some definite confirmation of his suspicions, to bestow his official blessing upon the pair. He was prepared to do it, and anxious to end a somewhat invidious situation; yet it was a fact that, reason with himself as he might about the ideal nature of the union, the prospect of it always made him feel a little lonely and outcast.

Now, having answered the advertisement as arranged, he dismissed the matter from his mind.

He was engaged the next morning with Miss Halifax over divers matters of moment, when Nestle brought him a message that his correspondent had answered his letter in person, and was soliciting an interview. He carried with him a card, on which was engraved the name of Miss Daisy Limner, and, being instructed, in a few moments ushered in the lady herself, whom he left with his principal and the amanuensis.

Gilead invited his visitor to a seat, which she accepted with shyness, and disposed herself in with self-possession. She was slight, of an engaging figure, and most becomingly dressed in a slim high-waisted frock of a dove colour, and a beehive hat of not exaggerated proportions. Her eyes were limpid and appealing, and her age obviously justified its claim. A touch of powder on her cheek, of scarlet on her lip, emphasised nothing more than the irreclaimable tendency of her sex to paint the lily. But, indeed, it was so delicately done that it completely imposed upon Gilead.

“I am at your service, Madam,” said he. “You can bestow, if you will, your confidence upon us with perfect security.”

The young lady, at the plural pronoun, glanced askance, with an appearance of surprise, at the amanuensis.

“You can trust,” said Gilead, “in Miss Halifax as in me. Miss Halifax is my fiduciary and adviser in the most private business of the office.”

The stranger bowed slightly, but it was to be remarked that, in the interview which followed, she was at pains to ignore entirely the presence of the beautiful confidante.

“You make it, sir, I understand,” she said, nervously shifting as she spoke, and twining her fingers in her lap, “your interest to succour the wronged and afflicted?”

Her voice in itself was musical and caressing; but its pronunciation was curiously deliberate, suggesting the meticulous caution of one who was feeling her way through the many snares of the parts of speech.

“That is so,” said Gilead. “It is for what we exist.”

“I owe my information,” said the visitor, “to the lady in whose humble abode I have taken a temporary refuge.”

“May I ask her name?” said Gilead. “I should be glad to recall the occasion and the nature of the services which procured us this testimony.”

“With favour, sir,” said the young lady, “I would rather not reveal it at present, even to you. I have reason to believe I may be followed and spied, and the apprehension makes me nervous. I would rather not, if you see no objection.”

“None whatever,” said Gilead.

“Whoever she is,” continued Miss Limner, “she spoke in that way of you that I saw at once I could do no better than confide to your hands, if you would accept of it, the very delicate business about which I have come to consult you.”

“If you will acquaint me of its nature,” said Gilead, “I can the better estimate our capacities for dealing with it.”

The young lady sighed.

“I am sure you are very good,” she said. “I had better begin at the beginning, hadn’t I, and tell you who I am?”

“If you please,” said Gilead.

“My father,” said the visitor, looking down, and appearing to deliberate her phrases, “was once a distinguished financier in the City. Somewhat late in life he married, for his second wife, a lady connected with the stage. She was extremely beautiful, and I was the only pledge of their union. It has always been a grief to me to be told I took after her; for indeed, though I say it as shouldn’t, she disgraced herself as a lady by eloping with her husband’s best friend. My father never got over the blow, but retired from business and to the Continent, taking me with him who was then no more than a child of nine. We lived at Flushing, where I grew up. One day a gentleman called, and had a private interview with my father; and from that moment everything went wrong with us. He had discovered, as I know now, something umbrageous about my dear father’s transactions in the past, and, though as a fact my father had only been victimized by a sneak, he used the knowledge to get money out of him. He was a terrible man, and his name, which was like himself, was Dark. Presently he quartered himself on us, and, to cut a long story short, ended by getting my father completely under his thumb. He controlled all our expenses, ran the household as he liked, and, worst of all, compelled me, at the price of silence, to listen to his hateful addresses. Sometimes my father, in a wild effort to escape from his clutches, would flame up and defy him; but these convulsions of his were always succeeded by a state of prostration, which enabled our enemy to rivet more firmly than ever the chains in which he held us. And then at last came the crash. One day, after a terrible scene between them, my father had a stroke.”

The young lady, pausing, and taking a little silken sachet from her skirt, touched her pretty cheeks with it, as if to dry from them any suggestion of emotion.

“That,” she continued after a little, “quieted things for a time, but I could not believe that the end was more than postponed. In this dreadful situation I was sitting one morning with my poor father, when he suddenly turned to me, and in a low eager voice told me to give him all my ears. Naturally startled, I looked at him. His face was as white as a tea-cup, but a new resolution had come to it. ‘Hush!’ he said; ‘hush, my little innocent Daisy. I am much better; but I do not wish it to be suspected. We have reached a crisis, and must either dare or perish. Mr Dark has gone away for a few days, leaving me, as he thinks, helpless. We must seize the opportunity to secure to ourselves what remnant of our fortune remains. There are my first wife’s jewels, the existence of which I have concealed from you, and which a natural sentiment has hitherto prevented me from turning into capital. Now at last they must be used to provide for us in our extremities. I am innocent, my sweet child, though appearances are made by that villain to tell against me—’ and he informed me for the first time of the nature of the wicked hold on him, which I will not wrong him by mentioning, for, if the truth were told, it was something greatly to his credit. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘the plan I have formed to baffle him is this: You must cross, at once and by yourself, to England, taking with you the jewels and what cash I can provide. You must go straight to London, to a certain humble lodging I will tell you, where you must wait for me in hiding until I am recovered enough to follow. In the meantime I will tell Dark when he returns that you have heard of a situation across the water that required your immediate application, and so will hope to keep him quiet until I am in a condition to give him the slip and join you. Heaven, my darling child, prosper us in this venture, which seems to be our last resource in the vortex of gloom and despair into which we are plunged. Go, and if all is well, expect to welcome me to your arms in the course of a few days.’”

The young lady, greatly agitated, rose to her feet at this point, and faced her attentive listener.

“Startled, overcome as I was,” she said in a low voice, “by the suddenness of the proposal, a short reflection convinced me that my dear father was right. After a little hesitation, a few natural tears, I obeyed his wishes, and, carrying the jewels with me in a red morocco handbag, hurried down to the quay, and took my passage for Queenboro’ in the boat which, fortunately or unfortunately, was on the point of starting. Followed by a thousand apprehensions, faced by as many of the strange unknown life that lay before me, my journey was not, as you may suppose, a happy one. But Fate had worse in store for me. Near Sheerness we ran into a thick fog, and, colliding with another vessel, our own was sunk in a few minutes.”

Gilead rose in his turn.

“Great heaven!” he cried—“the Prinz Karl? Were you a passenger by her? But she foundered in shallow water, and all on board escaped in time?”

“I believe every one,” said the visitor. “I was in the ladies’ saloon at the moment, and, distracted with fear, rushed on deck, leaving all my little belongings on the seat which I had occupied. I forgot everything in the terror of the shock. It was only when we had been hurriedly transferred to the vessel which had struck us, and had backed from the sinking steamer, that I came slowly to realize how our fortune had gone down in her, and that this was the news with which I had to greet my father.”

Gilead drew a relieved breath, and smiled.

“She will be raised, of course,” said he. “It is only a question of time before you recover your property.”

“O, no, indeed!” cried the young in an agonized voice. “It is a question of much more—of life or death for us. Time is our worst enemy. It is that very delay and publicity which will give our persecutor the clue to our whereabouts for which he will be seeking.”

“In what way?” asked Gilead.

“This happened,” answered the visitor, “three days ago. At any moment now I may expect my father. His flight, you may be sure, will not be long unsuspected by Mr Dark, who will see in this our double desertion a ruse to outwit him. He will follow instantly, with nose and ears open to every scent and rumour. If we claim our property, he will be down on us in a moment; if we do not, we are ruined.”

Gilead considered a little.

“Well, madam,” he said presently, “you have, if I am not mistaken, a suggestion to make?”

The young lady advanced an impulsive step towards him, with clasped hands and burning eyes.

“If only,” she said—“O! if only I could recover the jewels before my father’s arrival, and so forestall our persecutor! It was for that purpose I advertised; it is to implore that assistance that I now stand before you, a very helpless, very unhappy girl.”

Gilead, never deaf to an emotional appeal, glanced across at Miss Halifax.

She sat, with a pen between her red lips, arranging some typescript in a very calm and business-like way. She ignored his look, though she was quite conscious of it.

“I conclude,” he said, looking down, and frowning very slightly, “that their recovery is practicable?”

“I understand, perfectly,” answered the young lady. “The funnel-heads of the Prinz Karl are almost visible at low tide, and all that is wanted is a diver. The company, to whom I have applied, admit the fact, but decline to make a speciality of my case. They refer me to the salvage operations, which would mean a delay, as I have explained, fatal to our interests. I am nearly penniless, sir, and quite incapable of undertaking the cost, which would be considerable, on my own account. If only you would bear it for me, claiming, if you would, your share—”

Gilead lifted a majestic hand.

“We are not a commission agency, madam,” he said, in a tone so grave that the young lady started, and lifted appealing eyes to him.

“O!” she whispered, in a drowned voice, “I did not mean to offend you. But I did not know—I am so young and inexperienced.”

He smiled reassuringly.

“You could not advance a better claim on the Agency,” he said. “Well, I will make, in justice both to yourself and us, such inquiries as are necessary to the case, and report the result to you together with our decision.”

“When?” she entreated, hardly able to articulate.

“If you will call the first thing to-morrow morning,” he said—“the office opens at ten o’clock—I shall hope to be in a position to afford you the assistance you desire. The company must be consulted, your claim admitted, permission given. You understand?”

She looked at him intently a little, with large haunting eyes; then, whispering that she would trust in him implicitly, that she placed her destiny in his hands, withdrew without another word. Having to pass near Miss Halifax on her way out, she gathered her skirts, with a scarce perceptible movement, from contact with that young lady.

“Well?” said Gilead, the moment that she was gone, appealing to his amanuensis.

Miss Halifax went on writing, but with a slight flush on her cheek.

“Does anything strike you?” he said, persisting.

“Only, perhaps,” she answered softly, “that for an ingénue, she showed considerable resourcefulness and self-possession.”

“H’m!” said Gilead. He reseated himself and, leaning back, tapped his fingers together, between doubt and a small sense of irritation: “We must remember her Continental training, perhaps. As to her father, and her father’s friends, I must confess to some sort of suspicion; but the quality of the graft, Miss Halifax, is not to be judged by the briar. I see no reason to question the main truth of her story; but anyhow it is easily put to the proof. The steamer was certainly sunk as she described. If she was a passenger by it, and the company, being questioned, admits her claim, that surely is all that is necessary to our taking action in the matter. Do you not agree with me?”

For the first time the young lady glanced across at him in an agitated way.

“I must,” she said low, “on the face of things. It is only the—the guilefulness of my own sex, its plausibility, and its imaginative readiness in concocting fables to—to delude the noble and the generous, that make me sceptical. I can’t help comparing this story with some others we have heard; but I daresay my experiences have robbed me of some delusions about women—indeed I am sure they have, and as much to my shame as to my good.”

He looked at her with a sudden light of remorse in his eyes.

“I never thought of that in my self-centred blindness,” he said—“that you might suffer from contact with vice.”

“Indeed, no,” she answered very earnestly. “I suffer, but it is the fires of purification. I am a better woman, I hope, than I was. Please do what you think right in this case, Mr Balm. Your judgments, as I said before, put us constantly to shame.”

He was not satisfied; but he let the subject drop, and went out to make the enquiries he had promised at the offices of the shipping company.

“I can discover nothing,” he said when he returned, “to justify any disbelief in the young woman’s statement. The manager, who treated me with extreme courtesy, acknowledges her name and claim, and is perfectly willing that an attempt should be made to recover the red morocco handbag, stipulating only that an inventory of its contents shall be placed in the hands of their representative, who will accompany us, that all expenses shall be borne by me, and that I will hold myself personally responsible for the good faith of the transaction. He has telephoned to Sheerness, to put a diver employed by the company especially at my service; and, in short, the attempt is to be made as early as practicable to-morrow morning.”

She smiled.

“How prompt and resourceful you are. I do hope, most sincerely, that success in every way will reward you.”

Miss Daisy Limner came punctually to her appointment. The office doors were scarcely open before she applied at them. When she heard the gratifying news, her joy and relief almost overcame her.

“You are a good sort!” she said, blinking away a genuine tear or two, with a heartiness which a little staggered Gilead.

They caught the earliest train available from Victoria, where they took up the agent of the company, who, in his turn, took down, en route, the list, supplied very readily by Miss Limner, of jewels contained in the red morocco handbag. It made quite a goodly show, and impressed Gilead with a proper sense of the disaster implied in their loss. Mr Limner, he thought, must have exhibited an extraordinary fondness and delicacy of feeling in forbearing to realize on them until the last moment, since they appeared to represent, on their face value, a quite handsome investment. It bettered his opinion of the hard-pressed gentleman, and made him feel more kindly disposed towards him; especially as a number of the stones being unset, no very personal sentiment could be assumed to attach to them.

All the journey down the young lady, having relieved her mind, seemed given over to the highest spirits. Now and again, even, a topical allusion, a spice of slang would come to garnish her discourse, and give Gilead a painful idea of the nature of the company which her young destiny had ruled her. She chaffed the shipping clerk demurely, and plied him with her eyes in a way which dreadfully embarrassed that susceptible youth, who was obviously torn between his admiration for so much beauty and liveliness and an almost irresistible desire to respond in kind, and his respectful awe of the young plutocrat whose steps he attended. Gilead, in short, was glad when the journey had come to an end, and they stepped out upon the platform at Sheerness.

The barge which was to convey them to the sunken vessel was already in waiting by the hard, with a couple of men in her in addition to the diver, who, fully apparelled but for his helmet, sat beside the apparatus which was to supply him with air. They put off at once, for the flow was running strong, and a pull of a mile was needed to carry them to the spot where a lighter, flying a danger signal, was moored above the invisible Prinz Karl. It was a lovely glowing day. Mist and water blended in that luminous haze which seems to obliterate the boundaries between death and existence, and to drug the soul in Lethe. Swimming within that neutral commingling of elements, air melting into liquid and liquid into air, the boat drifted like a bubble; all sense of gravity appeared lost. The world was a remote thing; the town they had left a mirage; all sounds coming from it were subdued to a soft humming and tinkling like noises in a dream. They only jarring note, to Gilead at least, was supplied by Miss Limner. The young lady did not somehow seem to fit into the picture.

He could hardly believe that this was the identical artless Daisy that had blinked her dewy lashes at him in his office a few hours earlier. She sparkled, but it was more now with the sweet sting of champagne. In the exhilaration of the trip, and its assumed happy termination, her speech threw off more and more its trammels of formality. She was sportive with the stolid mariners. She coquetted her way to their deeply-embedded hearts, and smiling on the shipping-clerk, who had turned green with jealousy, asked him not to feel bound to her if he would rather look another way. Even the majestic diver himself did not escape her; but was questioned as to the aggravation he must feel when he came across mermaids and was unable to kiss them. She made a toy of every detail of his harness; and when at last they had anchored, and the ladder was hung over the barge-side, and the helmet was screwed into place and the air-pump got into position, she actually did, with a chirrup of laughter, drop a butterfly kiss on the glass plate through which his face looked, and bid the grotesque figure, as it valued her favour, return with the bag or not return at all. And, after that, the silence of nervous suspense which came to reign was a relief to one person.

The diver had his minute instructions as to where to find the red morocco handbag, and his essay was to be confined solely to that item of treasure-trove. Many anxious minutes passed, however—while the pump squeaked and thumped monotonously and the gear was spasmodically paid out—before a rising swirl in the water indicated the return of the submerged venturer. But when at last his head and arms did appear over the side, the young lady gave a scream which “shivered to the stars.”

“O—O! you sweet, you duck, you beauty!”

He laid the red morocco bag at her feet.

And so the object of the mission was accomplished.

Gilead, satisfied so far, had been nursing secret designs of sending Miss Limner and the shipping-clerk back to London together, while he followed by a later train. Finding, however, to his discomfiture that the clerk, after formally identifying the property (which was packed away thrillingly among natty little articles of ornament and attire) had instructions to remain at Sheerness, his gallantry would leave him no alternative but to escort the lady back to town himself. A further coup de la fortune consigned them to a compartment in the train of which they remained the sole undisturbed possessors.

Miss Limner, a very new expression on her face, half insolence, half exultation, lolled back against the cushions, regarding the young man with an eye of saucy self-possession. She did not open her mouth, however, until they were well started on their return journey; and then she spoke suddenly, and to disturbing effect.

“You have been very kind to me,” she said. “Would you like to kiss me?”

The momentary shock of which Gilead was conscious did not escape her observation. She laughed musically.

“O!” she said; “it was only a try, but a pretty forlorn one. You are satisfied with virtue for its own sake, aren’t you? The worse for the girls, for you are a jolly good-looking fellow.”

“Am I, my dear?” he said drily. He used the term without design. It was simply an involuntary expression of his estimate of her value, and she recognized it as such.

“I’m not in the least offended,” she answered. “I meant to pay you back a trifle of what I owed you, that was all; and you’re quite right to refuse to compromise with a penny in the pound. What does it feel like to respect yourself? I wish you’d tell me.”

“I don’t know that I can,” he said. “I can only answer in a negative way by thinking what I should feel like if I didn’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like you, perhaps.”

“O!” she said, “you devil! But I don’t mind. It takes all sorts to make a world.”

She settled herself comfortably, putting out her little feet and crossing her ankles.

“Tell me,” she said, “what sort of a woman do you admire? That lady-clerk of yours?”

“I will answer again,” said Gilead, “negatively. I don’t admire you.”

“Why not? I’m pretty.”

Gilead shrugged his shoulders.

“O!” she said, “I’ve mental gifts too—don’t you ever doubt it”—and then she added, seemingly irrelevantly: “I hate that lady-clerk.”

Gilead saw that he had to conciliate a perversity, and he lent himself to the task with all the humour and tact of which he was capable. One could regard life from Flushing, he perceived, with as much worldly acumen as from London. He talked and talked about momentous nothings, until he had won her to a train of interests outside their individual selves; nevertheless he felt curiously abashed and humiliated all the time. He shied instinctively from any allusion to her story, or comment on her proposed future proceedings; and he welcomed the lights of Victoria Station, when at length they ran into them, with a sigh of most heartfelt relief.

He was a moment or two in following her out of the carriage—and then he perceived that she was standing impassively in the custody of a couple of plain-clothes constables, one of whom was known to him.

“Nicked,” she said, “and no mistake. I wonder if that lady-clerk of yours had a hand in this.”

“It’s all right, Mr Balm,” said the detective—he held the red morocco bag secure in his hand—“you didn’t know what you were doing, sir, but we’re obliged to you none the less. We guessed you would return by this train, and we’ve been looking out for you.”

“What’s in the bag?” said Gilead, recovering himself with a gasp.

“Why,” said the detective, “that’s it. Just the proceeds, sir, of the great jewellery robbery from Kruier’s shop in Brussels. We’d been wondering where they’d gone; and now we know. Come along, Miss Topsy. We’ll let you hear further about it by and by, Mr Balm.”

She turned, and blew a kiss over her shoulder to Gilead.

“Tell her,” she cried, “I’ll be her first bridesmaid at the wedding. I’ll remember you to papa and Mr Dark!” and she went off jauntily with a laugh.

Standing a minute in stupefaction, Gilead turned at last and, hailing a cab, drove to the office, and, finding it closed, went on to Miss Halifax’s flat. The young lady met him with a blush, and a deprecating look in her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “I’m so sorry, Mr Balm. Has she been arrested? But I see by your face that she has. Please forgive me.”

“For what?” he asked.

“I could not believe in her,” she said, lowering her lids; “I simply could not. The strange similarity of her story to others—I seemed to recognize the breed, and—and I simply could not. The moment you were gone, I went to visit Chief Superintendent Ingram at Scotland Yard—he’s a great friend of mine, you know—and I asked him to let me see the photographs of people wanted, and she was amongst them. I could not be mistaken—her name is Topsy London, and she was suspected of being mixed up in this affair. All her story about the wreck must have been quite true; but nothing else was. Anyhow they thought it worth their while to be at the station, and I see that it was. It was the Inspector’s opinion, and I believe him right, that she had heard of the Agency, and had put the advertisement into the Daily Post with the express intention of drawing you.”

A smile flickered on Gilead’s lips.

“The bait!” he murmured.

She flushed, and answered in a curiously distressed voice:—

“Don’t—please don’t! But don’t you think it likely? And the principals, the actual burglars, did not of course, dare, to appear in the matter. Tell me you aren’t offended with me.”

Gilead caught at the warm young hand drooped limp before him.

“Offended!” he said kindly. “It is you who put my judgments to shame. I will never again trust myself away from your apron-strings; I—” He checked himself suddenly, sighed, and added: “but that’s nonsense. I must learn some time to walk alone.”

CHAPTER IX.
THE QUEST OF THE REGISTERED PARCEL

The typical Agony Column of the Daily Post was built up in courses which varied in little but their diurnal degree of thickness. Starting from a plinth, say, of Dancing and Gymnastics, it would rise by successive stages, through Cast-off Clothes, Skin-beautifiers and Superfluous-hair Removers, Patent-medicines and Special-cure Treatments, Detective Agencies, Paying-Guest and Social Introduction offers, to Personal Appeals, whence soaring through Club-fixtures and Lost Property advertisements, it would flower at length into a capital of the true ‘agonizings,’ crowned sometimes, at irregular intervals, by an apocalyptic warning to the worldly and thoughtless to set their houses in order.

Gilead, from mere force of habit, was wont to run his eye down these successive courses from top to base—though his proper business lay with the Personal Appeal section alone—which was the reason why the following brief supplication momentarily arrested his attention on a certain November day:—

It was just the commonplace cry, prescriptively uttered; yet, though potential of any possible tragedy, and full in implication of sorrow and significance, it lay off the track of his questing, and he would hardly have given it a thought had it not been for the oddness of the title-name. Janet, Jeannette, Jenny—these were familiar forms; but, Jennett! Evidently anglicised from the Gallic, the confidence shown by the advertiser in the exclusiveness of its appeal witnessed to the unusualness of the spelling. If Jennett was the only Jennett in England and Jennett saw, Jennett must understand. Then Gilead passed on to other matters, and forgot all about it.

Now one of the penalties imposed upon the growing reputation of the Agency consisted in the increasing number of unsolicited applications for its help. Originally designed for the purpose of voluntarily enquiring into the merits of advertised appeals, greed and hypocrisy had quickly discovered the wideness of its operations and the munificence displayed in its dealings, and were not slow in endeavouring to take advantage of them. So complete by this time, however, was the machinery of the Bureau that very little base coin was permitted to pass it undetected; but the greater surveillance rendered necessary thereby threw such an amount of additional work on the staff that Gilead was obliged at length to rule that the cachet of an advertisement was obligatory before a case could be considered; and to that rule he rigidly adhered, allowing no exceptions.

One day Herbert Nestle, during his morning consultation with his chief, ventured to draw his attention to an advertisement in the day’s paper:—

“Did you notice it, sir?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered Gilead, with a smile. “I noticed it and wondered. It reminded me of an article on Dead Letters that I read years ago. Specimen addresses were quoted, one of which ran, ‘Mrs’—I forget the name—‘Behind the Church, England’.”

The secretary laughed.

“This advertisement was put in at my instance, sir. It was merely a ‘draw,’ inserted to comply with your rule. Mrs B., or Mrs Baxter, applied to me personally, and thinking her case a reasonable one, I advised her to approach us according to form.”

“You did very right, Nestle. Who is Mrs Baxter?”

“Her son, sir, was a postman in the South-West District. I don’t know if you happened to notice the case. He was convicted of stealing a registered letter, and was condemned at the Middlesex Quarter Sessions last week to eighteen months hard labour.”

“No, I did not. Well?”

“There was nothing, I confess, very out-of-the-way about the affair, unless it was the recklessness of the deed in the face of sure detection.”

Gilead shook his head. “That is the commonest of criminologic problems,” he said.

“But, pardon me, sir,” answered the secretary; “does its commonness compel one to jump to the common conclusion? Say that A, a criminal, is reckless, must B, therefore, who is reckless, equal A?”

“I stand corrected, Nestle. What was in the registered packet?”

“Diamonds, sir. They had been forwarded from a dealer in Hatton Garden to an address in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, and the parcel was registered up to four hundred pounds.”

“And it was not delivered?”

“It was accounted for as far as Baxter, and Baxter could produce no receipt for its delivery by him. Compensation was claimed by Mr Hamlin, the dealer; the Post Office had to pay up, and Baxter went to prison.”

“What was his defence?”

“O, innocence, complete and childlike! He swore he had been given the receipt; the addressee swore he had not received the parcel—there was virtually no defence.”

“Had he ever been in trouble before?”

“That was the damning part of it. He had once been convicted of pledging unpaid-for goods, and had been bound over as a first offender. There was a girl in the case then, I believe, and no doubt he had wanted to pose before her as the monied gentleman.”

“Well, Nestle, well,” said Gilead after a short pause. “You have your reasons, no doubt, for encouraging Mrs Baxter. You have given me none so far for meddling with a case which appears to have been decided equitably on its merits. It would be the grossest abuse of privilege, as of course you are aware, for the Agency to interfere in the clear processes of justice, save on some exceptionally plausible assumption of their miscarriage.”

“I have my reasons certainly, Mr Balm, or I should not have ventured to approach you on the matter. I do so now with extreme diffidence. Your clear candour of soul—I am speaking purely officially—is pre-eminent amongst us in the recognition of truth. There may be miscarriage of justice here, or there may not be. I ask you only to take the responsibility of deciding out of my hands, lest helpless innocence should suffer. I am not going to prejudice the case by a word; and I should take it as a great kindness, sir, if you would yourself see and interrogate Mrs Baxter.”

“She is here—at this moment?”

“She is here, sir, awaiting your decision.”

“Very well; I will see her.”

He called softly after the secretary as the latter was leaving the room.

“Nestle!”

“Yes, Mr Balm?”

“You are a good fellow, Nestle.”

The secretary bowed gravely and disappeared.

He returned in a few moments, ushering in a little worn woman, dressed in decent black, and neither common nor pretentious in appearance. Her age might have been fifty, but the wrinkles of a hundred years lined her forehead, and the very tragedy of death in life haunted her dim eyes. Gilead, always sensitive to sorrow, rose and, motioning Nestle to leave them alone together, placed a chair for the visitor and seated himself where he could best command without embarrassing her.

“Am I right, Mrs Baxter,” he said, “in assuming that you are a nurse?”

Something neatly formal in her habit may have suggested the hypothesis. It was a correct one in any case.

“Yes, sir,” she answered, with a faint expression of surprise.

“Ah!” he said. “That is to establish at the outset a claim upon one’s sympathies. Now I am acquainted with the bare facts of this unhappy story, Mrs Baxter. What have you to say to qualify them? I ask you to speak to me with perfect confidence and freedom.”

“Thank you, sir, from my heart. I know the value of conciseness, and I will not say a word more than I must.”

“Very well. You are convinced of your son’s innocence?”

“Charlie is innocent, sir.”

“Just so. Now, as to the proofs?”

“If such there were, sir, I need not have troubled you.”

“To be sure you need not. Let us say, then, the admissible likelihoods?”

“It would have been the act of a madman, would it not, knowing that he must be found out?”

“Yes?—very well. I do not propose to comment for the moment.”

“Secure of such wealth, sir, and having yielded to the temptation, is it likely he would have returned straight to the office, with the property upon him, to risk discovery at the very beginning?”

“Now, Mrs Baxter, you must understand that what I say is said with the view to make clear to myself the pros and cons of this business, and is without prejudice to the real truth of the case. I do not know what is the procedure of the Post Office in such matters; but in the event, say, of your son not having been called upon, in the hurry of business, to produce his receipt, until the complaints of the sender of the packet made its production imperative, he would have had plenty of time, would he not, to dispose of the goods?”

“He was never, sir, a penny the richer by it.”

“I am afraid that proves nothing; and no doubt all these assumptions were taken into consideration at the trial.”

The visitor’s small face flushed, and for the first time she bit her lip to keep back the tears.

“It was hard, sir,” she said, “that his very innocence should have been used to witness against him, and that his sentence was made the severer because he would not confess to the whereabouts of things he had never stolen.”

She was staunch to her fine belief. Gilead felt very pitifully towards the broken little soul.

“And then,” she cried, “to bring up that old affair against him, when it had proved the very making of his character! The error of a boy, sir, ignorant of what he was doing, though I don’t defend it; but he had pledged things for his father when alive, and he knew nothing of the law. It was a girl egged him on to it, and Charlie never could resist a pretty face. But it was a lesson and a warning that he never forgot—no not, as the dear God shall witness, when he walked on that last round that ruined him.”

She blinked away the tears that would come.

“It is very sad,” said Gilead—“horribly sad indeed.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered, “it is sad; but I did not come to urge the feelings of a mother, or her love and faith in her boy. All that could be said was said, as you concluded, at the trial; and, appearances being what they were, no other verdict could have been expected. I remember my promise to you, and I am not going to suppose that what was argued in his defence, without avail, by a clever lawyer can be put more convincingly by me. What I founded the only hope I possess on is what brought me to pray Mr Nestle to procure me, if possible, this interview with you. I want to know, sir, what part the girl Jennett had in my son’s ruin.”

Gilead had been looking down. He raised his head with a start.

“Who did you say?” he asked quickly: “Jennett?”

The little visitor had been groping in her pocket, from which she now produced a paper which she unfolded and brought across to him. It was a front page of the Daily Post, dated some days back, and marked round in red ink was the very advertisement which had excited the young man’s curiosity. He looked up, in surprised enquiry.

“Is it not an uncommon name, sir?” she said.

“A most uncommon one, I should think,” he answered. “I saw and remarked upon it at the time.”

“The person that advertised it must have been so sure of its uncommonness,” she said, “that he felt nothing more was needed to explain the who to and where from.”

Gilead nodded. The little shrewd well-spoken woman had echoed his own thoughts. She bent, and touched his arm, softly, impressively.

“Jennett, sir,” she said, “was the name of the servant-girl that took the packet from my son’s hand at the door, and went away and returned with the signed receipt, and afterwards swore at the trial that she had never taken the packet and never given a receipt.”

Gilead had risen, and was listening attentively, with a wondering look on his face.

“Who’s advertising for her,” said the visitor, “and what has she done to need forgiveness? That should be my son’s business, I think. Her treachery was what cut him to the heart. He knew her and had often exchanged jokes with her at the door during the short time she was in the house. I told you, sir, that he loved a pretty face. This girl was pretty, and in an impudent lively way, he told me—but indeed I was able to see for myself; and though a mother’s eyes are prejudiced, I am not going to deny her an attraction of a sort.”

“She gave the receipt to your son, you say—or he says?”

“He told me, sir, that he was never so shocked and horrified in his life as when, returning from his round, he found it missing.”

“But if she gave it to him?”

“That is so, sir.” She put a hand momentarily to her eyes. “I must speak the whole truth,” she said in a low troubled voice. “Charlie was reticent about that morning. I felt that he was hiding something from me—not his guilt; no, sir, no. But I believe that, as a fact, he was courting the girl, and I can’t help thinking that his silence about particulars was designed in some way to screen her.”

“What has become of her? Have you tried to see her since?”

“She has left her situation, sir; which makes me the more certain that this advertisement refers to her.”

“Softly, Mrs Baxter! We mustn’t jump too surely to conclusions. There may be other Jennetts in the world.”

“There may be, sir; or there may have been once. There’s a tombstone in Hampshire, I’m told, with the name on it spelt that way. But not in London. Local wants would be advertised in local papers.” She had evidently considered the case in all its bearings. “I should like,” she said, “to have a word with Jennett’s employer.”

“Well, why not?” asked Gilead.

“Because, sir, he too has shut up his house and gone,” she answered.

“Now, let me think out things a bit,” said Gilead. He paced the room for some minutes, deeply absorbed. Presently, with a sigh, he stopped before his visitor.

“You must kindly leave your address with my secretary, Mrs Baxter,” he said. “I can promise you nothing but that I will look into this business—with what result you shall be informed no later than to-morrow morning. Any comments of mine on it at this stage would be superfluous and cruel.”

She just gazed at him a moment with shining eyes. “Charlie is innocent,” she said. “God bless you, sir”—and she went hurriedly from the room.

A little later saw Gilead closeted with Chief Superintendent Ingram of Scotland Yard.

“No, Mr Balm,” the officer was saying: “I’m afraid you’ll make nothing of it. The case was as plain as the nose on your face, and as well-shaped, if you’ll excuse my saying it, from a professional point of view.” He laughed. “It seems you’re fated,” he said, “to be involved in these Post Office affairs; but you won’t come out of this one, I greatly fear, with such credit to yourself as you did out of the last.”

“Very well, Ingram,” answered Gilead. “But it’s justice I desire, not credit.”

“Justice, you may take my word for it, sir, was properly dealt.”

“Do you know anything about this Mr Hamlin?”

“Nothing to his harm certainly. He’s one of the ‘Garden’ lot, not amongst the swells, but substantial so far as I know. Do you?”

“Nothing whatever. And the other—the addressee in the case?”

“Valkenburg? He is a Hollander by birth—a bona-fide dealer.”

“In diamonds?”

“In diamonds.”

“And known of course to Mr Hamlin?”

“Naturally. The enclosure in question was forwarded by Hamlin to him in the ordinary course of business.”

“But why by post? Hatton Garden and the Vauxhall Bridge Road—it was there this Valkenburg lived, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, number 41, B.”

“Well, they aren’t such leagues apart.”

The Superintendent shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s quite a common custom of the trade,” he said. “One can conceive a dozen reasons for it in the press of business. Really, Mr Balm, such an act affords no grounds whatever for suspicion.”

“Do you know that Valkenburg has shut up his house since the trial and gone away?”

“Has he? To South Africa like enough. It’s quite probable.”

“And that the girl, his servant, who denied having received the parcel, has gone too?”

“To South Africa?”

“No. I mean she has left her situation.”

“Well, now, he wouldn’t want to leave her shut up in the empty house, would he?” He sniggered, his hairy face creasing all over. “No, Mr Balm,” he said. “I see what you’re driving at; but it won’t wash, sir. There was never a hint of collusion between the two. Of course if he had bolted and taken the girl with him, there might have been some shadow of a reason for suspicion. But I believe, upon my word, sir, that you’re taking away the man’s character. You must remember that if anyone was to profit by such a fraud, it would not be Valkenburg but Hamlin.”

Gilead rose.

“Well, yes, it would seem so,” he said.

“Seem so!” The Chief Superintendent rose too. “I don’t know what’s got into your head about this business, Mr Balm,” he said; “but unless you’ve something up your sleeve—” he paused, in sudden wonder. “Have you?” he asked—“something unguessed at by us here?”

“Good morning, Ingram,” said Gilead. “I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve got a vaccination mark up my sleeve. Don’t say anything about it.”

The Superintendent stood some moments frowning after he was left alone.

“I wonder if he has,” he mused darkly. “It wouldn’t, in my opinion, be quite playing the game; but, there, angels like him must claim their privileges, I suppose.”

But, indeed, Gilead’s sleeve was innocent of the least suggestion of a hidden trump, and he was playing the game squarely and with the slightest of prospects of scoring anything out of it. He could not honestly convince himself that any real significance was to be extracted from the coincidence of the names, and what urged him alone to persevere, perhaps, was the inspired conviction of the little mother as to her son’s innocence. In any case he was pledged to her to sift the matter to its grounds, and in truth to himself he would not shirk that undertaking.

Calm and fearless in his sense of right, he bent his steps straightway to Hatton Garden and sought the office of Mr Abel Hamlin. He was fortunate in finding that gentleman at home in a tiny dark room on the second floor of a pile of offices so mouldy and decrepit that it seemed they must have fallen but for the sturdy support of the warehouses on either side. There were a pedestal desk in this cabin, a safe and some rows of littered shelves along the walls, and a table in a corner at which a young woman sat type-writing. She turned as the visitor entered, and revealed an extremely pretty face, but saucy in suggestion and over-dressed as to its hair, which was golden and plentiful. Mr Hamlin himself, rising from the desk, displayed the figure of a neat youngish gentleman, olive-complexioned, and dark-eyed, with thick brows and a little close moustache of strongest black. He spoke with the suspicion of a foreign accent, challenging the visitor with a “Yes, sir?”

Gilead accepted his surroundings with a glance of some surprise. Was it from dens like this that priceless gems were to be unearthed.

“I must apologize for intruding, Mr Hamlin,” he said, “especially as my motive is an unprofessional one. Permit me to introduce myself.”

The dealer glanced at the card offered him, started a little, smiled, and bowed.

“It is possible,” said Gilead, “that you may know me by name?”

“It is very possible, sir.”

“And the character of the Agency I represent?”

“That, sir, is also not of the unlikeliest.”

“I am interested in the case of the young man, Charles Baxter, Mr Hamlin.”

“Indeed, Mr Balm?”

“In your opinion has this advertisement, which appeared recently in the columns of the Daily Post, any connection with, or bearing upon, the issues of that trial?”

He produced and handed over the extract given him by Mrs Baxter. The dealer accepted it courteously.

“Miss Barnes,” he said, after a glance at the paper; “you can go to your dinner if you will be so good.”

He turned away, shifting some letters on his desk, during the few moments occupied by the girl in putting on her hat and jacket. She passed Gilead with a stare of curiosity and a little pert jerk of her chin. As the sound of her footsteps receded, Mr Hamlin came about again, an engaging smile on his lips. He was a handsome, rather swarthy young fellow, and his teeth looked glaringly white.

“I am quite at a loss for your meaning, sir,” he said. “For me I can see no connection, not in the least.”

“You will recall,” said Gilead, “that Mr Valkenburg’s servant gave evidence at the trial—evidence damning to the prisoner. Her name was Jennett, and spelt in this peculiar way.”

“Yes?” Mr Hamlin’s voice and manner expressed some obvious bewilderment.

“I may say,” continued Gilead, “in this very peculiar, and perhaps unique way.”

“Ah! That is so? And what then, Mr Balm?”

What then, in very truth? All in one amazed instant Gilead seemed to recognize the preposterous character of his mission. Even supposing the Jennett of the trial were the Jennett of the advertisement, what then? Exactly. A sudden consciousness of absurdity bubbled up in him—an inclination to hysterical laughter.

“Upon my word I don’t know,” he said, with a little gasp.

A sense of reciprocal humour seemed to tickle the dealer. His cheeks rounded, his teeth showed dazzlingly.

“O, this is too ridiculous!” said Gilead, steadying himself. “I don’t know why I’m here; I don’t know what to say next. There’s nothing for it now but unqualified frankness.”

He then explained to the dealer the rather forlorn promise which had been extracted from him by his recent visitor, and the shadowy justification it had seemed to possess in the advertisement.

“And that justification is gone somehow,” he said. “I don’t know what’s become of it. There must be a hole in my mind, and it’s slipped through; and now only a sense of empty impertinence remains.”

He was winningly apologetic. Mr Hamlin smiled and nodded at him, staring in his face, but he hardly spoke a word in reply. Finally, Gilead, turning to go, paused to put a question.

“I feel,” he said, “that I owe Mr Valkenburg a like explanation; but I understand that he has left his house?”

“Yes, yes,” said the dealer. “He is gone, O, yes!—to Kimberley. He would be much amused.”

“He is a friend of yours? And no doubt a gentleman of the highest reputation. I don’t know how to excuse my visit; it was unpardonable.”

“I do not understand,” answered the other. “You have said nothing to give offence. For Valkenburg, he would appreciate your excellent intentions as I do, and, were he at home, would give you, I am sure, all the information you desire. That Lamb’s Agency has the claim to much privilege, Mr Balm.”

There seemed no conscious irony in his voice or in his fixed smile.

“It is good of you to put it in that way,” said Gilead. “I can only repeat my apologies. Good morning, Mr Hamlin.”

“Good-morning,” answered the dealer, without moving from where he stood.

As Gilead ran down the stairs he met a telegraph boy coming up. In his hurry he collided with the youth and almost bowled him over.

“That illustrates my fatuity,” he thought, as he went on his way. “In trying to put one Postal official on his legs I knock down another.”

He felt considerably depressed—a state of mind to which the weather in its especial degree contributed. The day had opened with a brooding menace of fog—a threat amply justified in the sequel. Hour by hour, as the morning wore on, the squalid cloud had drooped and thickened, until now, at one o’clock in the afternoon, the street lamps were all alight and the shops blazing like dull furnaces. So motionless and so heavy grew the atmosphere that to breathe became a physical consciousness, and one almost felt the process going on in one’s lungs of selection and rejection, with a gasp now and again over a mistaken choice. If all the world, according to the poet, had been a stage, nature could not have come more equal to the occasion with a mise-en-scène of cloud-castles and a ‘make-up’ pencil better adapted to paint every eye with a sooty rim.

For some reason—for which he neither accounted, nor troubled to account to himself—the discomfited and vaguely uneasy young gentleman turned his steps towards the Vauxhall Bridge Road. Perhaps he still entertained a forlorn hope of somehow justifying himself, to himself and to Mrs Baxter, in his venture; perhaps a mere morbid desire, common enough in its attraction, to visit the spot of a murdered delusion impelled him. He felt sore, and at the same time unaccountably troubled. It seemed to him now that he had allowed himself to be convinced over readily. In any case it was his instinct to fulfil a promise to the letter, or to what his chivalrous conscience chose to consider the letter.

At the corner of Dorset Street, after what appeared to him an interminable groping down a murky sewer, he found the house he sought. The fog was so thick, that, peering over the area railings, he could distinguish few of its details; but he could just make out that it was a corner house of a long row, and superficially in nowise superior to its neighbours in general dullness and unattractiveness. Why should it be indeed? And then suddenly he observed that a bill was pasted within one of its shuttered windows.

He found the gate, opened it, and entered to read.