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:--

“_Jennett. Return and all will be forgiven._”

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:--

“_Help earnestly solicited. Mrs B._”

“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.

“_To be let. Furnished. Apply etc._”

The name of a local house-agent was given at the foot.

Now what prompted him to the act Gilead never knew; but in a moment he had decided to procure the key of the house and enter to make an examination. On his difficult way to the address given he ran across a friend, who particularly desired a talk with him.

“One minute,” said Gilead, and, running in to the agent’s stated his wishes. “I am in a hurry,” he said. “Would it trouble you to send the key on to my office?”

His name asked and given, the agent was all smiles.

“Certainly, Mr Balm--O, most certainly, sir! Would you wish our representative to accompany you?”

“No, no. Send the key, and I will choose my own time.”

He was bowed out, and the rest of the afternoon he spent over business matters. It was not till nearly six o’clock that, set free, he bethought himself of his purposed exploration and of his definite promise to Mrs Baxter, and started a second time for the Vauxhall Bridge Road.

The fog had so deepened during the interval that walking proved a difficulty and in some ways a danger. However, Gilead was naturally well acquainted with the locality, and the perils of no more than a single crossing were there to beset him. He reached the house at last after a calculated progress, and, mounting the shallow flight of steps to the door, paused a moment before fitting in the latchkey.

He was feeling suddenly odd, and disenchanted with his quest, conscious of a strong reluctance to leave even that turbid street--with its running links, and flares of sudden omnibuses, and boom of life however obscured--and enter into the darkness and mysticism of the empty house. He had ascertained that its owner desired to let it furnished during the period of his temporary absence abroad; and what then? He himself did not want to take it; neither was it possible for him in this murk and at this time of the evening to conduct any investigation worth the name.

“What an ass I am,” he thought. “Haven’t I had enough of empty houses?”

And at that, and the flush of sudden shame the memory evoked, he ran the key resolutely in, opened the door, entered, and clicked to the latch behind him.

Tingling in every vein, as he stood there in the numb, half paralyzing darkness, he felt for his electric torch and switched on the little friendly spark. It’s tiny light only seemed to make the gloom more terrific. He advanced a step or two--and a host of shadows seemed to scatter and fly noiselessly before him. They sped up the stairs, they disappeared round open doors; things ticked and scuttled, stealing into corners and squatting to whisper. Looking over his shoulder in a panic, he saw a white face watching him, and almost dropped the torch in the start he gave.

The rumble of a passing omnibus came like a rally to his nerves. He turned resolutely, though his hands were wet--and saw that the face was the pictured face of an old gentleman hanging upon the wall.

Again he turned, reassured--and felt that the painted eyes were following him. He stopped.

“It’s no good,” he thought; “and worse than useless. I’ll just make a cursory examination and come again to-morrow.”

Stepping on tiptoe, as though fearful of attracting secret attentions, he turned from the hall into the first of the two rooms that opened from it to his right, and flashed his little torch to and fro. So far as he could gather, it was merely like the hall, commonplace. From the usual oil-cloth, and the usual marbled paper, he had passed to the usual lace curtains, cheap plush chairs, rickety tripod tables, antimacassars, and an ebony over-mantel painted with birds and adorned with tawdry glass vases from the sixpenny-halfpenny shop. Its unimaginative philistinism was so utter as to convey a certain comfort; no ghost of the past could possibly walk in such an atmosphere of raw newness. Gilead breathed out a little easing sigh, and turned to go.

His foot was on the threshold, when he heard a sound that brought him to a stop, instant and startled. Someone outside was softly fitting a latchkey into the hall door!

He backed into the room, clicking off his light, and, half-closing the door, stood motionless behind it. The act had been instinctive, unreflecting, but, being done, must abide its own consequences.

In the meantime, hardly breathing, he was conscious that some human presence was in the hall; and the next moment he heard the front door softly closed.

“Ah!” said a voice, subdued but perfectly clear: “that is well done so far. What a good luck that you had the thought to secure Valkenburg’s key.”

Hamlin’s voice--the voice whose intonation still hung familiarly in his ear! Gilead’s nerves, in this sudden stress of danger, felt but undefined, tightened like bow-strings.

“I think of things. Perhaps you’ll get to understand that and do me justice in time.” It was a girl who answered, low and distinct. “What are you doing with that match-box?” she said.

“What does one generally do with a match-box?”

“Well, don’t do it. It might attract a neighbour or a policeman. I know the place well enough to find my way about it in the dark.”

“You’re a clever girl, Jennett” (Gilead gave ever so slight a start). “You can find your way to everything. I hardly expected you would turn up to your appointment in this fog. How long had you been waiting?”

“I got here when I told you in my wire that I should.”

“And with the key and all? By why here? Why not in the old place?”

“What a cur you are, Tizzy. Don’t you understand? Because she’s polluted it for me. If you want me back you must find me another place than that. You might have got through that little time of separation, I think, without filling it in with a fresh fancy.”

“Ah, there! You were the most unreasonably jealous, my darling.”

“Was I? You are lying, you know. What a d----d fool you must take me for. Well, just assure me, please, that your answer to my wire was God’s truth. You have got rid of her?”

“Yes, on my honour, Jennett, she is gone.”

“That’s well for you.”

“It is? You don’t mean to tell me you would really have gone those lengths in revenge?”

“Wouldn’t I? And further.”

“After all that I’d trusted to you?”

“What did I trust to you? I played _my_ part faithfully, didn’t I--did the housemaid proper; goosed the poor postman--his face is before me now, with its sick, gone look, as I palmed the receipt that I pretended to put with a kiss into his pouch. Why Valkenburg made proposals to me, too, and handsome ones. I never told you that. But he did; and I was true to you; and all the time you were filling my place with that Barnes devil. I wonder I didn’t murder you both; but luckily I had a safer and a surer means to pay you out--the dummy parcel itself, which I hadn’t destroyed as you wanted me to, but had kept and hidden against accidents. You know that now, don’t you, and are willing to do anything to save your beastly skin?”

“Ah! You are very hard and cruel. What have you done with it?”

“All in good time. You thought you had got me safe enough, didn’t you, when I perjured my soul, for your sake, to ruin that miserable young fellow? I hadn’t found out about you then; but knowing you, I had had the wit to keep my piece of evidence as a precaution. My word would have gone for nothing by itself; but with that to back it you were dished and done for, Tizzy. I got just a fragment of pleasure out of the thought of your face when you received my letter, without an address, telling you what I’d kept and had in my power to use.”

“Did you? That is very well. I tell you it almost breaks the heart that loves you so much. Such cruel treachery!”

“Well, it was lucky for you I saw your advertisement. And now just tell me what you meant by talking about forgiveness in it.”

“It seems so base of you, little girl. You had chosen to misunderstand. My connection with Miss Barnes was one of sympathy and mutual assistance in a difficulty. You were never once forgotten by me--no, never; and I had to have a type-writer.”

“I’m a fool, Tizzy. I despise you and I mistrust you; but, God help me, I love you. I shall know why someday, I daresay. I don’t now; but I can’t help it. Do you know why I wired you to meet me here?”

“How can I?”

“It is hidden in this house, where I knew I could get it when I wanted it, having Valkenburg’s key. I didn’t fancy the risk of keeping it about me.”

“Where, Jennett, little darling?”

“Shall I tell you at last?”

“If you want to save your poor unhappy lover. Jennett, it is just time. There are suspicions awakened. Only to-day I had a visit from that stupid interfering ass, Balm of Lamb’s Agency, who came to enquire about things on behalf of the postman’s old mother.”

“It is hidden behind that picture on the wall.”

“Ah! My God! What a rash place! Valkenburg’s old father. Let me go, while I fetch it.”

“Tizzy!” The girl by her voice was crying hysterically. “Not for a moment. Think what I have done for your sake! Tizzy, I’m going to drop. Take me into the back room--there is a sofa there.”

Gilead, the skin of his scalp prickling, heard the two move slowly along the hall and enter the room beyond. His face was white and stern. The Providence which had brought him acquainted with the details of this infernal plot to ruin an innocent man would surely not stultify its own design at the last. The girl was still sobbing. Bracing every nerve to his task, he lost not an instant, but, treading like a cat, stole out into the hall, and reaching the picture, felt behind it unavailingly.

The sobs ceased suddenly. Desperate, he switched on his torch, saw a little white packet stuck between frame and canvas, seized his prize and made for the door. Even as he lifted the latch, there came a rush from the room behind him, a mad oath, a flash and slam, and a bullet splintered the panel close by his head. In another moment he was out and plunging for the steps. Something took his hat with a plop, and then the merciful fog received him, and he was running--running bareheaded for his life. A sense of uproar, of crackling fires seemed to goad him on and wing his steps; instinctively he had turned the corner out of the main road and was flying along Dorset Street; and then, all in a moment, he became conscious that his own racing heart was his sole company, and, recovering his reason, he slowed down and began to consider his bearings.

* * * * * * *

Mr Abel Hamlin ran straight into the arms of a contiguous police officer, who had been attracted by the sound of the shots. The revolver still being clutched in his hand, and his explanation failing to give satisfaction, he was incarcerated pending enquiries. These resulted--Gilead in the meantime having found his way by desperate courses to Scotland Yard--in his indefinite detention on the twin charges of conspiracy to defraud and attempted murder.

It was a heartless business, as it came to be revealed. Hamlin, Superintendent Ingram to the contrary, had really been in a ruinous financial fix; he was a creature all selfishness and sensuality, and the scheme, cleverly worked, seemed fairly safe from detection. The girl Jennett, his mistress and decoy, an actress and prestidigitateur by profession, had imposed herself as a servant upon Valkenburg to whom she was unknown. The Dutchman, though perfectly innocent of any share in the plot, was susceptible, the girl pretty and the bait took. Valkenburg, a traveller in diamonds, was led to expect the receipt of a parcel of stones from Hamlin, with whom he had had some past dealings; the parcel, as he was able to swear, was never delivered; Hamlin wrote to enquire as to the non-acknowledgment of its receipt, and so the conspiracy was launched. The decoy in the meantime had been plying the unhappy young postman with her coquetries; he took fire readily; on the morning of the delivery of the registered packet, she pretended to procure her master’s signature to the receipt, which, in the course of some playful passages under the mistletoe--it was Christmas time--she feigned to return with her own fair fingers to Baxter’s pocket-book, sending her victim on his way to doom and disgrace with a bounding heart and a mind wholly absorbed in its own amorous raptures. To the last the poor dupe had believed in her affection, and had hoped against hope, that she would exonerate him.

But Miss Jennett, when once he was disposed of, had discovered a more personal call upon her interests in the infidelity of her confederate, and the means he had taken to kill time during the weeks of their enforced separation. Promptly she had disappeared, and, from some unknown address, written to upbraid the delinquent with his treachery, and to inform him as to her precautionary preservation of the registered packet (it was found, when opened by Gilead in the presence of Superintendent Ingram, to contain a few fragments of coal, addressed, of course, to Valkenburg in Hamlin’s writing) and of her intention to use it for the purpose of revenging herself on him. The advertisement in the Agony Column had resulted, and finally, after a struggle with herself, she had telegraphed to her scoundrel to meet her outside the house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road--with what result here witnesseth.

The villain in chief received an exemplary sentence, and Baxter his Majesty’s gracious pardon for being innocent. But the Post Office, naturally enough, would not employ him again, and Gilead, great to the end, found a situation for him. As to Miss Jennett, she simply repeated her former tactics, and disappeared.