"It was from the doctor--he always writes to her. I don"t care two straws about her brother, and I don"t remember much of the letter, except that it was a short one. The fellow was much better; and if the doctor didn"t write again, she might take it for granted that he was getting well. That was the substance of it."
"Did you notice where she put the letter when you gave it her back again?"
"Yes. She put it in the drawer where she keeps her account-books."
"Can you get at that drawer?"
"Of course I can. I have got a duplicate key--I always insist on a duplicate key of the place where she keeps her account books. I never allow the account-books to be locked up from my inspection: it"s a rule of the house."
"Be so good as to get that letter to-day, Mr. Vanstone, without your housekeeper"s knowledge, and add to the favor by letting me have it here privately for an hour or two."
"What do you want it for?"
"I have some more questions to ask before I tell you. Have you any intimate friend at Zurich whom you could trust to help you in playing a trick on Mrs. Lecount?"
"What sort of help do you mean?" asked Noel Vanstone.
"Suppose," said the captain, "you were to send a letter addressed to Mrs. Lecount at Aldborough, inclosed in another letter addressed to one of your friends abroad? And suppose you were to instruct that friend to help a harmless practical joke by posting Mrs. Lecount"s letter at Zurich? Do you know any one who could be trusted to do that?"
"I know two people who could be trusted!" cried Noel Vanstone. "Both ladies--both spinsters--both bitter enemies of Lecount"s. But what is your drift, Mr. Bygrave? Though I am not usually wanting in penetration, I don"t altogether see your drift."
"You shall see it directly, Mr. Vanstone."
With those words he rose, withdrew to his desk in the corner of the room, and wrote a few lines on a sheet of note-paper. After first reading them carefully to himself, he beckoned to Noel Vanstone to come and read them too.
"A few minutes since," said the captain, pointing complacently to his own composition with the feather end of his pen, "I had the honor of suggesting a pious fraud on Mrs. Lecount. There it is!"
He resigned his chair at the writing-table to his visitor. Noel Vanstone sat down, and read these lines:
"MY DEAR MADAM--Since I last wrote, I deeply regret to inform you that your brother has suffered a relapse. The symptoms are so serious, that it is my painful duty to summon you instantly to his bedside. I am making every effort to resist the renewed progress of the malady, and I have not yet lost all hope of success. But I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to leave you in ignorance of a serious change in my patient for the worse, which _may_ be attended by fatal results. With much sympathy, I remain, etc. etc."
Captain Wragge waited with some anxiety for the effect which this letter might produce. Mean, selfish, and cowardly as he was, even Noel Vanstone might feel some compunction at practicing such a deception as was here suggested on a woman who stood toward him in the position of Mrs.
Lecount. She had served him faithfully, however interested her motives might be--she had lived since he was a lad in the full possession of his father"s confidence--she was living now under the protection of his own roof. Could be fail to remember this; and, remembering it, could he lend his aid without hesitation to the scheme which was now proposed to him?
Captain Wragge unconsciously retained belief enough in human nature to doubt it. To his surprise, and, it must be added, to his relief, also, his apprehensions proved to be groundless. The only emotions aroused in Noel Vanstone"s mind by a perusal of the letter were a hearty admiration of his friend"s idea, and a vainglorious anxiety to claim the credit to himself of being the person who carried it out. Examples may be found every day of a fool who is no coward; examples may be found occasionally of a fool who is not cunning; but it may reasonably be doubted whether there is a producible instance anywhere of a fool who is not cruel.
"Perfect!" cried Noel Vanstone, clapping his hands. "Mr. Bygrave, you are as good as Figaro in the French comedy. Talking of French, there is one serious mistake in this clever letter of yours--it is written in the wrong language. When the doctor writes to Lecount, he writes in French.
Perhaps you meant me to translate it? You can"t manage without my help, can you? I write French as fluently as I write English. Just look at me!
I"ll translate it, while I sit here, in two strokes of the pen."
He completed the translation almost as rapidly as Captain Wragge had produced the original. "Wait a minute!" he cried, in high critical triumph at discovering another defect in the composition of his ingenious friend. "The doctor always dates his letters. Here is no date to yours."
"I leave the date to you," said the captain, with a sardonic smile. "You have discovered the fault, my dear sir--pray correct it!"
Noel Vanstone mentally looked into the great gulf which separates the faculty that can discover a defect, from the faculty that can apply a remedy, and, following the example of many a wiser man, declined to cross over it.
"I couldn"t think of ta king the liberty," he said, politely. "Perhaps you had a motive for leaving the date out?"
"Perhaps I had," replied Captain Wragge, with his easiest good-humor.
"The date must depend on the time a letter takes to get to Zurich. _I_ have had no experience on that point--_you_ must have had plenty of experience in your father"s time. Give me the benefit of your information, and we will add the date before you leave the writing-table."
Noel Vanstone"s experience was, as Captain Wragge had antic.i.p.ated, perfectly competent to settle the question of time. The railway resources of the Continent (in the year eighteen hundred and forty-seven) were but scanty; and a letter sent at that period from England to Zurich, and from Zurich back again to England, occupied ten days in making the double journey by post.
"Date the letter in French five days on from to-morrow," said the captain, when he had got his information. "Very good. The next thing is to let me have the doctor"s note as soon as you can. I may be obliged to practice some hours before I can copy your translation in an exact imitation of the doctor"s handwriting. Have you got any foreign note-paper? Let me have a few sheets, and send, at the same time, an envelope addressed to one of those lady-friends of yours at Zurich, accompanied by the necessary request to post the inclosure. This is all I need trouble you to do, Mr. Vanstone. Don"t let me seem inhospitable; but the sooner you can supply me with my materials, the better I shall be pleased. We entirely understand each other, I suppose? Having accepted your proposal for my niece"s hand, I sanction a private marriage in consideration of the circ.u.mstances on your side. A little harmless stratagem is necessary to forward your views. I invent the stratagem at your request, and you make use of it without the least hesitation. The result is, that in ten days from to-morrow Mrs. Lecount will be on her way to Switzerland; in fifteen days from to-morrow Mrs.
Lecount will reach Zurich, and discover the trick we have played her; in twenty days from to-morrow Mrs. Lecount will be back at Aldborough, and will find her master"s wedding-cards on the table, and her master himself away on his honey-moon trip. I put it arithmetically, for the sake of putting it plain. G.o.d bless you. Good-morning!"
"I suppose I may have the happiness of seeing Miss Bygrave to-morrow?"
said Noel Vanstone, turning round at the door.
"We must be careful," replied Captain Wragge. "I don"t forbid to-morrow, but I make no promise beyond that. Permit me to remind you that we have got Mrs. Lecount to manage for the next ten days."
"I wish Lecount was at the bottom of the German Ocean!" exclaimed Noel Vanstone, fervently. "It"s all very well for you to manage her--you don"t live in the house. What am I to do?"
"I"ll tell you to-morrow," said the captain. "Go out for your walk alone, and drop in here, as you dropped in to-day, at two o"clock. In the meantime, don"t forget those things I want you to send me. Seal them up together in a large envelope. When you have done that, ask Mrs.
Lecount to walk out with you as usual; and while she is upstairs putting her bonnet on, send the servant across to me. You understand?
Good-morning."
An hour afterward, the sealed envelope, with its inclosures, reached Captain Wragge in perfect safety. The double task of exactly imitating a strange handwriting, and accurately copying words written in a language with which he was but slightly acquainted, presented more difficulties to be overcome than the captain had antic.i.p.ated. It was eleven o"clock before the employment which he had undertaken was successfully completed, and the letter to Zurich ready for the post.
Before going to bed, he walked out on the deserted Parade to breathe the cool night air. All the lights were extinguished in Sea-view Cottage, when he looked that way, except the light in the housekeeper"s window.
Captain Wragge shook his head suspiciously. He had gained experience enough by this time to distrust the wakefulness of Mrs. Lecount.
CHAPTER IX.
IF Captain Wragge could have looked into Mrs. Lecount"s room while he stood on the Parade watching the light in her window, he would have seen the housekeeper sitting absorbed in meditation over a worthless little morsel of brown stuff which lay on her toilet-table.
However exasperating to herself the conclusion might be, Mrs. Lecount could not fail to see that she had been thus far met and baffled successfully at every point. What was she to do next? If she sent for Mr. Pendril when he came to Aldborough (with only a few hours spared from his business at her disposal), what definite course would there be for him to follow? If she showed Noel Vanstone the original letter from which her note had been copied, he would apply instantly to the writer for an explanation: would expose the fabricated story by which Mrs.
Lecount had succeeded in imposing on Miss Garth; and would, in any event, still declare, on the evidence of his own eyes, that the test by the marks on the neck had utterly failed. Miss Vanstone, the elder, whose unexpected presence at Aldborough might have done wonders--whose voice in the hall at North Shingles, even if she had been admitted no further, might have reached her sister"s ears and led to instant results--Miss Vanstone, the elder, was out of the country, and was not likely to return for a month at least. Look as anxiously as Mrs. Lecount might along the course which she had hitherto followed, she failed to see her way through the acc.u.mulated obstacles which now barred her advance.
Other women in this position might have waited until circ.u.mstances altered, and helped them. Mrs. Lecount boldly retraced her steps, and determined to find her way to her end in a new direction. Resigning for the present all further attempt to prove that the false Miss Bygrave was the true Magdalen Vanstone, she resolved to narrow the range of her next efforts; to leave the actual question of Magdalen"s ident.i.ty untouched; and to rest satisfied with convincing her master of this simple fact--that the young lady who was charming him at North Shingles, and the disguised woman who had terrified him in Vauxhall Walk, were one and the same person.
The means of effecting this new object were, to all appearance, far less easy of attainment than the means of effecting the object which Mrs.
Lecount had just resigned. Here no help was to be expected from others, no ostensibly benevolent motives could be put forward as a blind--no appeal could be made to Mr. Pendril or to Miss Garth. Here the housekeeper"s only chance of success depended, in the first place, on her being able to effect a stolen entrance into Mr. Bygrave"s house, and, in the second place, on her ability to discover whether that memorable alpaca dress from which she had secretly cut the fragment of stuff happened to form part of Miss Bygrave"s wardrobe.
Taking the difficulties now before her in their order as they occurred, Mrs. Lecount first resolved to devote the next few days to watching the habits of the inmates of North Shingles, from early in the morning to late at night, and to testing the capacity of the one servant in the house to resist the temptation of a bribe. a.s.suming that results proved successful, and that, either by money or by stratagem, she gained admission to North Shingles (without the knowledge of Mr. Bygrave or his niece), she turned next to the second difficulty of the two--the difficulty of obtaining access to Miss Bygrave"s wardrobe.
If the servant proved corruptible, all obstacles in this direction might be considered as removed beforehand. But if the servant proved honest, the new problem was no easy one to solve.
Long and careful consideration of the question led the housekeeper at last to the bold resolution of obtaining an interview--if the servant failed her--with Mrs. Bygrave herself. What was the true cause of this lady"s mysterious seclusion? Was she a person of the strictest and the most inconvenient integrity? or a person who could not be depended on to preserve a secret? or a person who was as artful as Mr. Bygrave himself, and who was kept in reserve to forward the object of some new deception which was yet to come? In the first two cases, Mrs. Lecount could trust in her own powers of dissimulation, and in the results which they might achieve. In the last case (if no other end was gained), it might be of vital importance to her to discover an enemy hidden in the dark. In any event, she determined to run the risk. Of the three chances in her favor on which she had reckoned at the outset of the struggle--the chance of entrapping Magdalen by word of mouth, the chance of entrapping her by the help of her friends, and the chance of entrapping her by means of Mrs. Bygrave--two had been tried, and two had failed. The third remained to be tested yet; and the third might succeed.
So, the captain"s enemy plotted against him in the privacy of her own chamber, while the captain watched the light in her window from the beach outside.
Before breakfast the next morning, Captain Wragge posted the forged letter to Zurich with his own hand. He went back to North Shingles with his mind not quite decided on the course to take with Mrs. Lecount during the all-important interval of the next ten days.
Greatly to his surprise, his doubts on this point were abruptly decided by Magdalen herself.