"In London, at this dull time? I trust nothing unpleasant has brought them here."
"Mrs. Vavasour is very ill. We had thoughts of sending for you, as the family physician was out of town: but she was out of danger, thank G.o.d, in a few hours. Now let me ask in turn after you. I hope no unpleasant business brings you up three hundred miles from your practice?"
"Nothing, I a.s.sure you. Only I have given up my Aberalva practice. I am going to the East."
"Like the rest of the world."
"Not exactly. You go as a dignified soldier of her Majesty"s; I as an undignified Abel Drugger, to dose Bashi-bazouks."
"Impossible! and with such an opening as you had there! You must excuse me; but my opinion of your prudence must not be so rudely shaken."
"Why do you not ask the question which Balzac"s old Tourangeois judge asks, whenever a culprit is brought before him,--"Who is she?""
"Taking for granted that there was a woman at the bottom of every mishap? I understand you," said the Major, with a sad smile. "Now let you and me walk a little together, and look at the Echinoid another day --or when I return from Sevastopol--"
Tom went out with him. A new ray of hope had crossed the Major"s mind.
His meeting with Thurnall might he providential; for he recollected now, for the first time, Mellot"s parting hint.
"You knew Elsley Vavasour well?"
"No man better."
"Did you think that there was any tendency to madness in him?"
"No more than in any other selfish, vain, irritable man, with a strong imagination left to run riot."
"Humph! you seem to have divined his character. May I ask you if you knew him before you met him at Aberalva?"
Tom looked up sharply in the Major"s face.
"You would ask, what cause I have for inquiring? I will tell you presently. Meanwhile I may say, that Mellot told me frankly that you had some power over him; and mentioned, mysteriously, a name--John Briggs, I think--which it appears that he once a.s.sumed."
"If Mellot thought fit to tell you anything, I may frankly tell you all.
John Briggs is his real name. I have known him from childhood." And then Tom poured into the ears of the surprised and somewhat disgusted Major all he had to tell.
"You have kept your secret mercifully, and used it wisely, sir; and I and others shall be always your debtors for it. Now I dare tell you in turn, in strictest confidence of course--"
"I am far too poor to afford the luxury of babbling."
And the Major told him what we all know.
"I expected as much," said he drily. "Now, I suppose that you wish me to exert myself in finding the man?"
"I do."
"Were Mrs. Vavasour only concerned, I should say--Not I! Better that she should never set eyes on him again."
"Better, indeed!" said he bitterly: "but it is I who must see him, if but for five minutes. I must!"
"Major Campbell"s wish is a command. Where have you searched for him?"
"At his address, at his publisher"s, at the houses of various literary friends of his, and yet no trace."
"Has he gone to the Continent?"
"Heaven knows! I have inquired at every pa.s.sport office for news of any one answering his description; indeed, I have two detectives, I may tell you, at this moment, watching every possible place. There is but one hope, if he be alive. Can he have gone home to his native town?"
"Never! Anywhere but there."
"Is there any old friend of the lower cla.s.s with whom he may have taken lodgings?"
Tom pondered.
"There was a fellow, a noisy blackguard, whom Briggs was asking after this very summer--a fellow who went off from Whitbury with some players.
I know Briggs used to go to the theatre with him as a boy--what was his name? He tried acting, but did not succeed; and then became a scene-shifter, or something of the kind, at the Adelphi. He has some complaint, I forget what, which made him an out-patient at St.
Mumpsimus"s, some months every year. I know that he was there this summer, for I wrote to ask, at Briggs"s request, and Briggs sent him a sovereign through me."
"But what makes you fancy that he can have taken shelter with such a man, and one who knows his secret?"
"It is but a chance: but he may have done it from the mere feeling of loneliness--just to hold by some one whom he knows in this great wilderness; especially a man in whose eyes he will be a great man, and to whom he has done a kindness; still, it is the merest chance."
"We will take it, nevertheless, forlorn hope though it be."
They took a cab to the hospital, and, with some trouble, got the man"s name and address, and drove in search of him. They had some difficulty in finding his abode, for it was up an alley at the back of Drury Lane, in the top of one of those foul old houses which hold a family in every room; but, by dint of knocking at one door and the other, and bearing meekly much reviling consequent thereon, they arrived, "_per modum tollendi_" at a door which must be the right one, as all the rest were wrong.
"Does John Barker live here?" asks Thurnall, putting his head in cautiously for fear of drunken Irishmen, who might be seized with the national impulse to "slate" him.
"What"s that to you?" answers a shrill voice from among soapsuds and steaming rags.
"Here is a gentleman wants to speak to him."
"So do a many as won"t have that pleasure, and would be little the better for it if they had. Get along with you, I knows your lay."
"We really want to speak to him, and to pay him, if he will--"
"Go along! I"m up to the something to your advantage dodge, and to the mustachio dodge too. Do you fancy I don"t know a bailiff, because he"s dressed like a swell?"
"But, my good woman!" said Tom, laughing.
"You put your crocodile foot in here, and I"ll hit the hot water over the both of you!" and she caught up the pan of soapsuds.
"My dear soul! I am a doctor belonging to the hospital which your husband goes to; and have known him since he was a boy, down in Berkshire."
"You?" and she looked keenly at him.
"My name is Thurnall. I was a medical man once in Whitbury, where your husband was born."
"You?" said she again, in a softened tone, "I knows that name well enough."