Chapter VIII: The Quest of the Red-Morocco Handbag

“_A Young lady asks immediate assistance from some benevolent capitalist to enable her to recover property of considerable value. Address D. L._ 078542 _Daily Post._”

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.”

[image: images/img_180.jpg caption: “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.”