That night again we spent at the Lakeside Hotel. In the small hours of the morning, as I lay awake and meditated, a thought broke across me. I was so excited by it that I rose and rushed into my brother-in-law"s bedroom. "Charles, Charles!" I exclaimed, "we have taken too much for granted once more. Perhaps Elihu Quackenboss carried off your dispatch-box!"
"You fool," Charles answered, in his most unamiable manner (he applies that word to me with increasing frequency); "is that what you"ve waked me up for? Why, the Quackenbosses left Lake George on Tuesday morning, and I had the dispatch-box in my own hands on Wednesday."
"We have only their word for it," I cried. "Perhaps they stopped on-and walked off with it afterwards!"
"We will inquire to-morrow," Charles answered. "But I confess I don"t think it was worth waking me up for. I could stake my life on that little woman"s integrity."
We did inquire next morning-with this curious result: it turned out that, though the Quackenbosses had left the Lakeside Hotel on Tuesday, it was only for the neighbouring Washington House, which they quitted on Wednesday morning, taking the same train for Saratoga which Charles and I had intended to go by. Mrs. Quackenboss carried a small brown paper parcel in her hands-in which, under the circ.u.mstances, we had little difficulty in recognising Charles"s dispatch-box, loosely enveloped.
Then I knew how it was done. The chambermaid, loitering about the room for a tip, was-Mrs. Quackenboss! It needed but an ap.r.o.n to transform her pretty travelling-dress into a chambermaid"s costume; and in any of those huge American hotels one chambermaid more or less would pa.s.s in the crowd without fear of challenge.
"We will follow them on to Saratoga," Charles cried. "Pay the bill at once, Seymour."
"Certainly," I answered. "Will you give me some money?"
Charles clapped his hand to his pockets. "All, all in the dispatch-box," he murmured.
That tied us up another day, till we could get some ready cash from our agents in New York; for the manager, already most suspicious at the change of name and the accusation of theft, peremptorily refused to accept Charles"s cheque, or anything else, as he phrased it, except "hard money." So we lingered on perforce at Lake George in ign.o.ble inaction.
"Of course," I observed to my brother-in-law that evening, "Elihu Quackenboss was Colonel Clay."
"I suppose so," Charles murmured resignedly. "Everybody I meet seems to be Colonel Clay nowadays-except when I believe they are, in which case they turn out to be harmless n.o.bodies. But who would have thought it was he after I pulled his hair out? Or after he persisted in his trick, even when I suspected him-which, he told us at Seldon, was against his first principles?"
A light dawned upon me again. But, warned by previous ebullitions, I expressed myself this time with becoming timidity. "Charles," I suggested, "may we not here again have been the slaves of a preconception? We thought Forbes-Gaskell was Colonel Clay-for no better reason than because he wore a wig. We thought Elihu Quackenboss wasn"t Colonel Clay-for no better reason than because he didn"t wear one. But how do we know he ever wears wigs? Isn"t it possible, after all, that those hints he gave us about make-up, when he was Medhurst the detective, were framed on purpose, so as to mislead and deceive us? And isn"t it possible what he said of his methods at the Seamew"s island that day was similarly designed in order to hoodwink us?"
"That is so obvious, Sey," my brother-in-law observed, in a most aggrieved tone, "that I should have thought any secretary worth his salt would have arrived at it instantly."
I abstained from remarking that Charles himself had not arrived at it even now, until I told him. I thought that to say so would serve no good purpose. So I merely went on: "Well, it seems to me likely that when he came as Medhurst, with his hair cut short, he was really wearing his own natural crop, in its simplest form and of its native hue. By now it has had time to grow long and bushy. When he was David Granton, no doubt, he clipped it to an intermediate length, trimmed his beard and moustache, and dyed them all red, to a fine Scotch colour. As the Seer, again, he wore his hair much the same as Elihu"s; only, to suit the character, more combed and fluffy. As the little curate, he darkened it and plastered it down. As Von Lebenstein, he shaved close, but cultivated his moustache to its utmost dimensions, and dyed it black after the Tyrolese fashion. He need never have had a wig; his own natural hair would throughout have been sufficient, allowing for intervals."
"You"re right, Sey," my brother-in-law said, growing almost friendly. "I will do you the justice to admit that"s the nearest thing we have yet struck out to an idea for tracking him."
On the Sat.u.r.day morning a letter arrived which relieved us a little from our momentary tension. It was from our enemy himself-but most different in tone from his previous bantering communications:-
"Saratoga, Friday.
"SIR CHARLES VANDRIFT-Herewith I return your dispatch-box, intact, with the papers untouched. As you will readily observe, it has not even been opened.
"You will ask me the reason for this strange conduct. Let me be serious for once, and tell you truthfully.
"White Heather and I (for I will stick to Mr. Wentworth"s judicious sobriquet) came over on the Etruria with you, intending, as usual, to make something out of you. We followed you to Lake George-for I had "forced a card," after my habitual plan, by inducing you to invite us, with the fixed intention of playing a particular trick upon you. It formed no part of our original game to steal your dispatch-box; that I consider a simple and elementary trick unworthy the skill of a practised operator. We persisted in the preparations for our coup, till you pulled my hair out. Then, to my great surprise, I saw you exhibited a degree of regret and genuine compunction with which, till that moment, I could never have credited you. You thought you had hurt my feelings; and you behaved more like a gentleman than I had previously known you to do. You not only apologised, but you also endeavoured voluntarily to make reparation. That produced an effect upon me. You may not believe it, but I desisted accordingly from the trick I had prepared for you.
"I might also have accepted your offer to go to South Africa, where I could soon have cleared out, having embezzled thousands. But, then, I should have been in a position of trust and responsibility-and I am not quite rogue enough to rob you under those conditions.
"Whatever else I am, however, I am not a hypocrite. I do not pretend to be anything more than a common swindler. If I return you your papers intact, it is only on the same principle as that of the Australian bushranger, who made a lady a present of her own watch because she had sung to him and reminded him of England. In other words, he did not take it from her. In like manner, when I found you had behaved, for once, like a gentleman, contrary to my expectation, I declined to go on with the trick I then meditated. Which does not mean to say I may not hereafter play you some other. That will depend upon your future good behaviour.
"Why, then, did I get White Heather to purloin your dispatch-box, with intent to return it? Out of pure lightness of heart? Not so; but in order to let you see I really meant it. If I had gone off with no swag, and then written you this letter, you would not have believed me. You would have thought it was merely another of my failures. But when I have actually got all your papers into my hands, and give them up again of my own free will, you must see that I mean it.
"I will end, as I began, seriously. My trade has not quite crushed out of me all germs or relics of better feeling; and when I see a millionaire behave like a man, I feel ashamed to take advantage of that gleam of manliness.
"Yours, with a tinge of penitence, but still a rogue, CUTHBERT CLAY."
The first thing Charles did on receiving this strange communication was to bolt downstairs and inquire for the dispatch-box. It had just arrived by Eagle Express Company. Charles rushed up to our rooms again, opened it feverishly, and counted his doc.u.ments. When he found them all safe, he turned to me with a hard smile. "This letter," he said, with quivering lips, "I consider still more insulting than all his previous ones."
But, for myself, I really thought there was a ring of truth about it. Colonel Clay was a rogue, no doubt-a most unblushing rogue; but even a rogue, I believe, has his better moments.
And the phrase about the "position of trust and responsibility" touched Charles to the quick, I suppose, in re the Slump in Cloetedorp Golcondas. Though, to be sure, it was a hit at me as well, over the ten per cent commission.
X
THE EPISODE OF THE GAME OF POKER
"Seymour," my brother-in-law said, with a deep-drawn sigh, as we left Lake George next day by the Rennselaer and Saratoga Railroad, "no more Peter Porter for me, if you please! I"m sick of disguises. Now that we know Colonel Clay is here in America, they serve no good purpose; so I may as well receive the social consideration and proper respect to which my rank and position naturally ent.i.tle me."
"And which they secure for the most part (except from hotel clerks), even in this republican land," I answered briskly.
For in my humble opinion, for sound copper-bottomed sn.o.bbery, registered A1 at Lloyd"s, give me the free-born American citizen.
We travelled through the States, accordingly, for the next four months, from Maine to California, and from Oregon to Florida, under our own true names, "Confirming the churches," as Charles facetiously put it-or in other words, looking into the management and control of railways, syndicates, mines, and cattle-ranches. We inquired about everything. And the result of our investigations appeared to be, as Charles further remarked, that the Sabeans who so troubled the sons of Job seemed to have migrated in a body to Kansas and Nebraska, and that several thousand head of cattle seemed mysteriously to vanish, a la Colonel Clay, into the pure air of the prairies just before each branding.
However, we were fortunate in avoiding the incursions of the Colonel himself, who must have migrated meanwhile on some enchanted carpet to other happy hunting-grounds.
It was chill October before we found ourselves safe back in New York, en route for England. So long a term of freedom from the Colonel"s depredations (as Charles fondly imagined-but I will not antic.i.p.ate) had done my brother-in-law"s health and spirits a world of good; he was so lively and cheerful that he began to fancy his tormentor must have succ.u.mbed to yellow fever, then raging in New Orleans, or eaten himself ill, as we nearly did ourselves, on a generous mixture of clam-chowder, terrapin, soft-sh.e.l.led crabs, Jersey peaches, canvas-backed ducks, Catawba wine, winter cherries, brandy c.o.c.ktails, strawberry-shortcake, ice-creams, corn-dodger, and a judicious brew commonly known as a Colorado corpse-reviver. However that may be, Charles returned to New York in excellent trim; and, dreading in that great city the wiles of his antagonist, he cheerfully accepted the invitation of his brother millionaire, Senator Wrengold of Nevada, to spend a few days before sailing in the Senator"s magnificent and newly-finished palace at the upper end of Fifth Avenue.
"There, at least, I shall be safe, Sey," he said to me plaintively, with a weary smile. "Wrengold, at any rate, won"t try to take me in-except, of course, in the regular way of business."
Boss-Nugget Hall (as it is popularly christened) is perhaps the handsomest brown stone mansion in the Richardsonian style on all Fifth Avenue. We spent a delightful week there. The lines had fallen to us in pleasant places. On the night we arrived Wrengold gave a small bachelor party in our honour. He knew Sir Charles was travelling without Lady Vandrift, and rightly judged he would prefer on his first night an informal party, with cards and cigars, instead of being bothered with the charming, but still somewhat hampering addition of female society.
The guests that evening were no more than seven, all told, ourselves included-making up, Wrengold said, that perfect number, an octave. He was a nouveau riche himself-the newest of the new-commonly known in exclusive old-fashioned New York society as the Gilded Squatter; for he "struck his reef" no more than ten years ago; and he was therefore doubly anxious, after the American style, to be "just dizzy with culture." In his capacity of Maecenas, he had invited amongst others the latest of English literary arrivals in New York-Mr. Algernon Coleyard, the famous poet, and leader of the Briar-rose school of West-country fiction.
"You know him in London, of course?" he observed to Charles, with a smile, as we waited dinner for our guests.
"No," Charles answered stolidly. "I have not had that honour. We move, you see, in different circles."
I observed by a curious shade which pa.s.sed over Senator Wrengold"s face that he quite misapprehended my brother-in-law"s meaning. Charles wished to convey, of course, that Mr. Coleyard belonged to a mere literary and Bohemian set in London, while he himself moved on a more exalted plane of peers and politicians. But the Senator, better accustomed to the new-rich point of view, understood Charles to mean that he had not the entree of that distinguished coterie in which Mr. Coleyard posed as a shining luminary. Which naturally made him rate even higher than before his literary acquisition.
At two minutes past the hour the poet entered. Even if we had not been already familiar with his portrait at all ages in The Strand Magazine, we should have recognised him at once for a genuine bard by his impa.s.sioned eyes, his delicate mouth, the artistic twirl of one gray lock upon his expansive brow, the grizzled moustache that gave point and force to the genial smile, and the two white rows of perfect teeth behind it. Most of our fellow-guests had met Coleyard before at a reception given by the Lotus Club that afternoon, for the bard had reached New York but the previous evening; so Charles and I were the only visitors who remained to be introduced to him. The lion of the hour was attired in ordinary evening dress, with no foppery of any kind, but he wore in his b.u.t.tonhole a dainty blue flower whose name I do not know; and as he bowed distantly to Charles, whom he surveyed through his eyegla.s.s, the gleam of a big diamond in the middle of his shirt-front betrayed the fact that the Briar-rose school, as it was called (from his famous epic), had at least succeeded in making money out of poetry. He explained to us a little later, in fact, that he was over in New York to look after his royalties. "The beggars," he said, "only gave me eight hundred pounds on my last volume. I couldn"t stand that, you know; for a modern bard, moving with the age, can only sing when duly wound up; so I"ve run across to investigate. Put a penny in the slot, don"t you see, and the poet will pipe for you."
"Exactly like myself," Charles said, finding a point in common. "I"m interested in mines; and I, too, have come over to look after my royalties."
The poet placed his eyegla.s.s in his eye once more, and surveyed Charles deliberately from head to foot. "Oh," he murmured slowly. He said not a word more; but somehow, everybody felt that Charles was demolished. I saw that Wrengold, when we went in to dinner, hastily altered the cards that marked their places. He had evidently put Charles at first to sit next the poet; he varied that arrangement now, setting Algernon Coleyard between a railway king and a magazine editor. I have seldom seen my respected brother-in-law so completely silenced.
The poet"s conduct during dinner was most peculiar. He kept quoting poetry at inopportune moments.