Elsie looked at the clock. It was only just after nine. She ran to her room, put on her jacket and hat, and called a cab.
She arrived at half-past nine. Checkley was already in his master"s room, laying out the table for the day"s work as usual. The girl was touched at the sight of this old servant of sixty years" service doing these offices zealously and jealously. She stood in the outer office watching him through the open door. When he had finished, he came out and saw her.
"Oh!" he grumbled. "It"s you, is it? Well--he hasn"t come. If you want to see Mr. Dering, it"s full early. If you want to see the new partner, he isn"t come. He don"t hurry himself. Perhaps you"ll sit down a bit and look at the paper. Here"s the _Times_. He"ll be here at a quarter to ten."
Checkley sat down at his desk and took up a pen. But he laid it down again and began to talk. "We"re in trouble, Miss. No fault of yours-- I don"t say it is. We"re in trouble. The trouble is going to be worse before it"s better. They"re not content with robbing the master, but they mock at him and jeer him. They jeer him. They put on his table letters addressed to the man they call Edmund Gray. They open his safe and put things in it belonging to Edmund Gray. We"re not so young as we was, and it tells upon us. We"re not so regular as we should be.
Sometimes we"re late--and sometimes we seem, just for a bit, not to know exactly who we are nor what we are. Oh! it"s nothing--nothing, but what will pa.s.s away when the trouble"s over. But think of the black ingrat.i.tood, Miss--Oh! black--black. I"m not blamin" you; but I think you ought to know the trouble we"re in--considering who"s done it and all."
Elsie made no reply. She had nothing to say. Certainly she could not enter into a discussion with this man as to the part, if any, taken in the business by the new partner. Then Checkley made a show of beginning to write with zeal. The morning was hot: the place was quiet: the old man"s hand gradually slackened: the pen stopped: the eyes closed: his head dropped back upon his chair: he was asleep. It is not uncommon for an old man to drop off in this way.
Elsie sat perfectly still. At eleven o"clock she heard a step upon the stairs. It mounted: it stopped: the private door was opened, and Mr.
Dering entered. He stood for a moment in the doorway, looking about the room. Now, as the girl looked at him, she perceived that he was again in the condition described by George--as a matter of fact, it was in this condition that Mr. Dering generally arrived in the morning. His coat was unb.u.t.toned: his face wore the genial and benevolent look which we do not generally a.s.sociate with lawyers of fifty years" standing: the eyes were Mr. Dering"s eyes, but they were changed--not in colour or in form, but in expression. Elsie was reminded of her portrait. That imaginary sketch was no other than the Mr. Dering who now stood before her.
He closed the door behind him and walked across the room to the window.
Then Elsie, lightly, so as not to awaken the drowsy old clerk, stepped into Mr. Dering"s office and shut the door softly behind her.
The sleep-walker stood at the window, looking out. Elsie crept up and stood beside him. Then she touched him on the arm. He started and turned. "Young lady," he said, "what can I do for you?" He showed no sign of recognition at all in his eyes: he did not know her. "Can I do anything for you?" he repeated.
"I am afraid--nothing," she replied.
He looked at her doubtfully. Then apparently remembering some duty as yet unfulfilled, he left the window and unlocked the safe. He then drew out of his pocket a ma.n.u.script tied up with red tape. Elsie looked into the safe and read the t.i.tle--"_The New Humanity_, by Edmund Gray," which was written in large letters on the outer page. Then he shut and locked the safe and dropped the key in his own pocket. This done, he returned to the window and sat down, taking no manner of notice of his visitor.
All this exactly as he had done before in presence of George and his old clerk.
For ten minutes he sat there. Then he shivered, straightened himself, stood up, and looked about the room, Mr. Dering again.
"Elsie!" he cried. "I did not know you were here. How long have you been here?"
"Not very long. A few minutes, perhaps."
"I must have fallen asleep. It is a hot morning. You must forgive the weakness of an old man, child. I had a bad night too. I was awake a long time, thinking of all these troubles and worries. They can"t find out, Elsie, who has robbed me." He spoke querulously and helplessly. "They accuse each other, instead of laying their heads together. Nonsense!
Checkley couldn"t do it. George couldn"t do it. The thing was done by somebody else. My brother came here with a c.o.c.k-and-bull case, all built up of presumptions and conclusions. If they would only find out!"
"The trouble is mine as much as yours, Mr. Dering. I have had to leave my mother"s house, where I had to listen to agreeable prophecies about my lover and my brother. I wish, with you, that they would find out!"
He took off his hat and hung it on its peg. He b.u.t.toned his frock-coat and took his place at the table, upright and precise. Yet his eyes were anxious.
"They tease me too. They mock me. Yesterday, they laid two letters addressed to this man, Edmund Gray, on my letters. What for? To laugh at me, to defy me to find them out. Checkley swears he didn"t put them there. I arrived at the moment when he was leaving the room. Are we haunted? And the day before--and the day before that--there were things put in the safe----"
"In the safe? Oh! but n.o.body has the key except yourself. How can anything be put in the safe?"
"I don"t know. I don"t know anything. I don"t know what may be taken next. My houses--my mortgages, my lands, my very practice----"
"Nay,--they could not. Is there anything this morning?"
He turned over his letters. "Apparently not. Stay; I have not looked in the safe. He got up and threw open the safe. Then he took up a packet.
"Again!" he cried almost with a scream. "Again! See this!" He tossed on the table the packet which he had himself, only ten minutes before, placed in the safe with his own hands. "See this! Thus they laugh at me--thus they torment me!" He hurled the packet to the other side of the room, returned to his chair, and laid his head upon his hands, sighing deeply.
Elsie took up the parcel. It was rather a bulky ma.n.u.script. The t.i.tle you have heard. She untied the tape and turned over the pages. The work, she saw, was the Autobiography of Edmund Gray. _And it was in the handwriting of Mr. Dering!_
She replaced it in the safe. "Put everything there," she said, "which is sent to you. Everything. Do you know anything at all about this man Edmund Gray?"
"Nothing, my dear child, absolutely nothing. I never saw the man. I never heard of him. Yet he has planted himself upon me. He holds his Chambers on a letter of recommendation from me. I was his introducer to the manager of the Bank--I--in my own handwriting--as they thought. He drew a cheque of 720_l_. upon me eight years ago. And he has transferred thirty-eight thousand pounds" worth of shares and stock to his own address."
"Added to which, he has been the cause of suspicion and vile accusation against my lover and my brother, which it will cost a great deal of patience to forgive. Dear Mr. Dering, I am so sorry for you. It is most wonderful and most mysterious. Suppose," she laid her hand upon his--"suppose that I was to find out for you----"
"You, child? What can you do, when the others have failed?"
"I can but try."
"Try, in Heaven"s name. Try, my dear. If you find out, you shall be burned for a witch."
"No. If I find out, you shall be present at my wedding. You were to have given me away. But now--now--Athelstan shall give me away, and you will be there to see. And it will be a tearful wedding"--the tears came into her own eyes just to ill.u.s.trate the remark--"because everyone will be so ashamed of the wicked things they have said. Sir Samuel will remain on his knees the whole service, and Checkley will be fain to get under the seat.--Good-bye, Mr. Dering. I am a Prophetess. I can foretell. You shall hear in a very few days all about Edmund Gray."
She ran away without any further explanation. Mr. Dering shook his head and smiled. He did not believe in contemporary Prophecy. That young people should place their own affairs--their love-makings and weddings--before the affairs of their elders, was not surprising. For himself, as he sometimes remembered--and always when this girl, with her pretty ways and soft voice, was with him--her visit had cheered him.
He opened his letters and went on with the day"s work.
As for Elsie, the smile in her eyes died out as she descended the stairs. If she had been herself a lawyer, she could not have worn a graver face as she walked across the courts of the venerable Inn.
She had established the connection between Mr. Dering and Edmund Gray.
It was he, and n.o.body else, who laid those letters on the table--placed those things in the safe. This being so, it must be he himself, and n.o.body else, who wrote all the letters, signed the cheques, and did all the mischief. He himself! But how? Elsie had read of hypnotism.
Wonderful things are done daily by mesmerists and magnetisms under their new name. Mr. Dering was hypnotised by this man Edmund Gray--as he called himself--for his own base ends. Well--she would find out this Edmund Gray. She would beard this villain in his own den.
She walked resolutely to Gray"s Inn. She found No. 22--she mounted the stairs. The outer door was closed. She knocked, but there was no answer.
She remembered how George had found his laundress, and visited her at her lodgings--she thought she would do the same. But on the stairs she went down she met an old woman so dirty, so ancient, so feeble, that she seemed to correspond with George"s account of her.
"You are Mr. Gray"s laundress?" she asked.
"Yes, Miss; I am." The woman looked astonished to see such a visitor.
"I want to see him. I want to see him on very important business. Most important to himself. When can I see him?"
"I don"t know, Miss. He is uncertain. He was here yesterday evening. He said he should not be here this evening. But I don"t know."
"Look here." Elsie drew out her purse. "Tell me when you think he will be here, and if I find him I will give you two pounds--two golden sovereigns. If you tell me right I will give you two sovereigns."
She showed them. The old woman looked hungrily at the coins. "Well, Miss, he"s been here every Sat.u.r.day afternoon for the last six months. I know it by the litter of papers that he makes. Every Sat.u.r.day afternoon."
"Very good. You shall have your money if I find him."
In the evening, Elsie said nothing about Mr. Dering and her strange discovery. The two young men talked about trying this way and that way, always with the view of implicating Checkley. But she said nothing.
CHAPTER XXI
I AM EDMUND GRAY