Birds of Prey Part 17

"1. That, in consideration of a weekly salary of one pound while in pursuit of certain inquiries, and of the sum of three thousand pounds to be paid upon the arising of a certain event, namely, the establishment of an heir-at-law to the estates of the late John Haygarth, the said Valentine Hawkehurst shall act as agent for the said George Sheldon, and shall not at any time during the continuance of this agreement do any act to prejudice the inquiry or the steps now being taken by the said George Sheldon to discover and establish an heir-at-law to the estates of the late John Haygarth.

"2. That at no time hereafter shall the said Valentine Hawkehurst be ent.i.tled to a larger recompense than is herein-before provided; nor shall he be liable to the said George Sheldon for the return of any moneys which the said George Sheldon may advance on account of the said inquiries in the event of the same not resulting in the establishment of an heir to the estates of the late John Haygarth.

"3. That the said Valentine Hawkehurst shall not alter his character of agent to the said George Sheldon during the prosecution of the said inquiry; that he shall deliver over to the said George Sheldon all doc.u.ments and other forms of evidence that may arise from his, the said Valentine Hawkehurst's, inquires; and that he shall week by week, and every week, and as often as may be necessary, report to the said George Sheldon the result of such inquiries, and that he shall not on any pretence whatever be at liberty to withhold such fruits of his researches, nor discover the same to any one else than the said George Sheldon, under a penalty of ten thousand pounds, to be recovered as liquidated damages previously agreed between the parties as the measure of damages payable to the said George Sheldon upon the breach of this agreement by the said Valentine Hawkehurst.

"In witness whereof the parties hereto have this 20th day of September 1862 set their hands and affixed their seals." "That sounds stiff enough to hold water in a court of law," said Valentine, when George Sheldon had recited the contents of the doc.u.ment.

"I don't suppose it would be much good in Chancery-lane," returned the lawyer carelessly; "though I daresay it sounds rather formidable to you. When one gets the trick of the legal jargon, it's not easy to draw the simplest form of agreement without a few superfluous words. I may as well call in my clerk to witness our signatures, I suppose."

"Call in any one you like."

The clerk was summoned from a sunless and airless den at the back of his princ.i.p.al's office. The two men appended their signatures to the doc.u.ment; the clerk added his in witness of the genuine nature of those signatures. It was an affair of two minutes. The clerk was dismissed.

Mr. Sheldon blotted and folded the memorandum, and laid it aside in one of the drawers of his desk.

"Come," he said cheerily, "that's a business-like beginning at any rate. And now you'd better have some brandy-and-soda, for what I've got to say will take some time in the saying of it."

On this occasion Mr. Hawkehurst accepted the lawyer's hospitality, and there was some little delay before the conversation proceeded.

It was a very long conversation. Mr. Sheldon produced a bundle of papers, and exhibited some of them to his agent, beginning with that advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Times_ which had first attracted his notice, but taking very good care _not_ to show his coadjutor the obituary in the _Observer_, wherein the amount of the intestate's fortune was stated.

The ready wits which had been sharpened at so many different grindstones proved keen enough for the occasion. Valentine Hawkehurst had had little to do with genealogies or baptismal registers during his past career; but his experiences were of such a manifold nature that he was not easily to be baffled or mystified by any new experience. He showed himself almost as quick at tracing up the intricacies of a family tree as Mr. Sheldon, the astute attorney and practised genealogist.

"I have traced these Haygarths back to the intestate's great-grandfather, who was a carpenter and a Puritan in the reign of Charles the First. He seems to have made money--how I have not been able to discover with any certainty; but it is more than probable he served in the civil wars, and came in for some of the plunder those crop-eared, psalm-singing, pierce-the-brain-of-the-tyrant-with-the-nail-of-Jael scoundrels were always in the way of, at the sack of Royalist mansions. The man made money; and his son, the grandfather of the intestate, was a wealthy citizen in the reigns of Anne and the first George. He was a grocer, and lived in the market-place of Ullerton in Leicestershire; an out-of-the-way sleepy place it is now, but was prosperous enough in those days, I daresay. This man (the grandfather) began the world well off, and ama.s.sed a large fortune before he had done with it. The lucky beggar lived in the days when free trade and compet.i.tion were unknown, when tea was something like sixty shillings a pound, and when a psalm-singing sleek-haired fellow, with a reputation for wealth and honesty, might cheat his customers to his heart's content. He had one son, Matthew, who seems, from what I can gather, to have been a wild sort of fellow in the early part of his career, and not to have been at any time on the best possible terms with the sanctimonious dad. This Matthew married at fifty-three years of age, and died a year after his marriage, leaving one son, who afterwards became the reverend intestate; with whom, according to the evidence at present before me, ends the direct line of the Haygarths." The lawyer paused, turned over two or three papers, and then resumed his explanation. "The sanctimonious grocer, Jonathan Haygarth, had one other child besides the son--a daughter called Ruth, who married a certain Peter Judson, and became the mother of a string of sons and daughters; and it is amongst the descendants of these Judsons that we may have to look for our heir at law, unless we find him nearer home. Now my idea is that we _shall_ find him nearer home."

"What reason have you for forming that idea?" asked Valentine.

"I will tell you. This Matthew Haygarth is known to have been a wild fellow. I obtained a good deal of fragmentary information about him from an old man in some almshouses at Ullerton, whose grandfather was a schoolfellow of Matthew's. He was a scapegrace, and was always spending money in London while the respectable psalm-singer was h.o.a.rding it in Ullerton. There used to be desperate quarrels between the two men, and towards the end of Jonathan Haygarth's life the old man made half a dozen different wills in favour of half a dozen different people, and cutting off scapegrace Matthew with a shilling. Fortunately for scapegrace Matthew, the old man had a habit of quarrelling with his dearest friends--a fashion not quite exploded in this enlightened nineteenth century--and the wills were burnt one after another, until the worthy Jonathan became as helpless and foolish as his great contemporary and namesake, the Dean of St. Patrick's; and after having died 'first at top,' did his son the favour to die altogether, _intestate_, whereby the roisterer and spendthrift of Soho and Covent-garden came into a very handsome fortune. The old man died in 1766, aged eighty; a very fine specimen of your good old English tradesman of the Puritanical school. The roisterer, Matthew, was by this time forty-six years of age, and, I suppose, had grown tired of roistering. In any case he appears to have settled down very quietly in the old family house in the Ullerton market-place, where he married a respectable damsel of the Puritan school, some seven years after, and in which house, or in the neighbourhood whereof, he departed this life, with awful suddenness, one year after his marriage, leaving his son and heir, the reverend intestate. And now, my dear Hawkehurst, you're a sharp fellow, and I daresay a good hand at guessing social conundrums; so perhaps you begin to see my idea."

"I can't say I do."

"My notion is, that Matthew Haygarth may possibly have married before he was fifty-three years of age. Men of his stamp don't often live to that ripe age without being caught in matrimonial toils somehow or other. It was in the days of Fleet marriages--in the days when young men about town were even more reckless and more likely to become the prey of feminine deception than they are now. The fact that Matthew Haygarth revealed no such marriage is no conclusive evidence against my hypothesis. He died very suddenly--intestate, as it seems the habit of these Haygarths to die; and he had never made any adjustment of his affairs. According to the oldest inhabitant in Ullerton almshouses, this Matthew was a very handsome fellow, generous-hearted, open-handed--a devil-may-care kind of a chap, the type of the rollicking heroes in old comedies; the very man to fall over head and ears in love before he was twenty, and to go through fire and water for the sake of the woman he loved: in short, the very last man upon earth to live a bachelor until his fifty-fourth year."

"He may--"

"He may have been a profligate, you were going to say, and have had baser ties than those of Church and State. So he may; but if he was a scoundrel, tradition flatters him. Of course all the information one can gather about a man who died in 1774 must needs be of a very uncertain and fragmentary character. But if I can trust the rather hazy recollections of my oldest inhabitant about what his father told him _his_ father had said of wild Mat Haygarth, the young man's wildness was very free from vice. There is no legend of innocence betrayed or infamy fostered by Matthew Haygarth. He appears to have enjoyed what the young men of that day called life--attended c.o.c.k-fights, beat the watch, gambled a little, and was intimately acquainted with the interior of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons. For nearly twenty years he seems to have lived in London; and during all those years he was lost sight of by the Ullerton people. My oldest inhabitant's grandfather was clerk to a merchant in the city of London, and had therefore some opportunity of knowing his old schoolfellow's proceedings in the metropolis. But the two townsmen don't seem to have seen much of each other in the big city. Their meetings were rare, and, so far as I can make out, for the most part accidental. But, as I said before, my oldest inhabitant is somewhat hazy, and excruciatingly prolix; his chaff is in the proportion of some fifty to one of his wheat. I've given a good deal of time to this case already, you see, Mr. Hawkehurst; and you'll find _your_ work very smooth sailing compared to what I've gone through."

"I daresay that sort of investigation is rather tiresome in the earlier stages."

"You'd say so, with a vengeance, if you had to do it," answered George Sheldon almost savagely. "You start with the obituary of some old bloke who was so disgustingly old when he consented to die that there is no one living who can tell you when he was born, or who were his father and mother; for, of course, the old idiot takes care not to leave a blessed doc.u.ment of any kind which can aid a fellow in his researches.

And when you've had the trouble of hunting up half a dozen men of the same name, and have addled your wretched brains in the attempt to patch the half dozen men--turning up at different periods and in different places--into one man, they all tumble to pieces like a child's puzzle, and you find yourself as far as ever from the man you want. However, _you_ won't have to do any of that work," added Mr. Sheldon, who was almost in a pa.s.sion when he remembered the trouble he had gone through.

"The ground has been all laid out for you, by Jove, as smooth as a bowling-green; and if you look sharp, you'll pick up your three thou'

before you know where you are."

"I hope I shall," answered Valentine coolly. He was not the sort of person to go into raptures about three thousand pounds, though such a sum must needs have seemed to him the wealth of a small Rothschild. "I know I want money badly enough, and am ready and willing to work for it conscientiously, if I get the chance. But to return to this Matthew Haygarth. Your idea is that there may have been a marriage previous to the one at Ullerton?"

"Precisely. Of course there may have been no such previous marriage; but you see it's on the cards; and since it is on the cards, my notion is that we had better hunt up the history of Matthew Haygarth's life in London, and try to find our heir-at-law there before we go in for the Judsons. If you knew how the Judsons have married and multiplied, and lost themselves among herds of other people, you wouldn't care about tracing the ramifications of _their_ family tree," said Mr. Sheldon, with a weary sigh. "So be it," exclaimed Mr. Hawkehurst carelessly; "we'll leave the Judsons alone, and go in for Matthew Haygarth."

He spoke with the air of an archaeological Hercules, to whom difficulties were nothing. It seemed as if he would have been quite ready to "go in" for some sidereal branch of the Plantagenets, or the female descendants of the Hardicanute family, if George Sheldon had suggested that the intestate's next of kin was to be found _there_.

"Mat Haygarth, by all means," he said. He was on jolly-good-fellow-ish terms with the dead-and-gone grocer's son already, and had the tone of a man who had been his friend and boon companion. "Mat Haygarth is our man. But how are we to ferret out his doings in London? A man who was born in 1720 is rather a remote kind of animal."

"The secret of success in these matters is time," answered the lawyer sententiously: "a man must have no end of time, and he must keep his brain clear of all other business. Those two conditions are impossible for me, and that's why I want a coadjutor: now you're a clever young fellow, with no profession, with no particular social ties, as I can make out, and your time is all your own; ergo, you're the very man for this business. The thing is to be done: accept that for a certainty.

It's only a question of time. Indeed, when you look at life philosophically, what is there on earth that is _not_ a question of time? Give the crossing-sweeper between this and Chancery-lane time enough, and he might develop into a Rothschild. He might want nine hundred years or so to do it in; but there's no doubt he could do it, if you gave him time."

Mr. Sheldon was becoming expansive under the influence of the brandy-and-soda; for even that mild beverage is not without its effect on the intellectual man.

"As to this Haygarth case," he resumed, after the consumption of a little more soda and a little more brandy, "it's a sure success, if we work it properly; and you know three thou' is not to be despised,"

added George persuasively, "even if a fellow has to wait some time for it."

"Certainly not. And the bulk of the Haygarthian fortune--I suppose that's something rather stiff?" returned Valentine, in the same persuasive tone.

"Well, you may suppose it's a decent figure," answered Mr. Sheldon, with an air of deprecation, "or how could I afford to give you three thou' out of the share I'm likely to get?"

"No, to be sure. I think I shall take to the work well enough when once I get my hand in; but I shall be very glad of any hint you can give me at starting."

"Well, my advice is this: begin at the beginning; go down to Ullerton; see my oldest inhabitant. I pumped him as dry as I could, but I couldn't give myself enough time for thoroughly exhaustive pumping; one has to waste a small eternity before one gets anything valuable out of those hazy old fellows. Follow up this Matthew from his birth; see the place where he was born; ferret out every detail of his life, so far as it is to be ferreted; trace his way step by step to London, and when you get him there, stick to him like a leech. Don't let him slip through your fingers for a day; hunt him from lodging to lodging, from tavern to tavern, into jail and out of jail--tantivy, yoicks, hark-forward! I know it's deuced hard work; but a man must work uncommonly hard in these days before he picks up three thou'. In a few words, the game is all before you; so go in and win," concluded George Sheldon, as he poured the last amber drops from the slim smoke-coloured bottle, and swallowed his gla.s.s of brandy undiluted by soda.

CHAPTER VII.

AUNT SARAH.

After that interview in Gray's Inn, there were more interviews of a like character. Valentine received further instructions from George Sheldon, and got himself posted up in the Haygarthian history, so far as the lawyer's information furnished the materials for such posting.

But the sum total of Mr. Sheldon's information seemed very little to his coadjutor when the young man looked the Haygarthian business full in the face and considered what he had to do. He felt very much like a young prince in the fairy tale who has been bidden to go forth upon an adventurous journey in a trackless forest, where if he escape all manner of lurking dangers, and remember innumerable injunctions, such as not to utter a single syllable during the whole course of his travels, or look over his left shoulder, or pat any strange dog, or gather forest fruit or flower, or look at his own reflection in mirror or water-pool, shining brazen shield or jewelled helm, he will ultimately find himself before the gates of an enchanted castle, to which he may or may not obtain admittance.

Valentine fancied himself in the position of this favourite young prince. The trackless forest was the genealogy of the Haygarths; and in the enchanted castle he was to find the crown of success in the shape of three thousand pounds. Could he marry Charlotte on the strength of those three thousand pounds, if he were so fortunate as to unravel the tangled skein of the Haygarth history? Ah, no; that black-whiskered stockbroking stepfather would ask for something more than three thousand pounds from the man to whom he gave his wife's daughter.

"He will try to marry her to some rich City swell, I dare say," thought Valentine. "I should be no nearer her with three thousand pounds for my fortune than I am without a sixpence. The best thing I can do for her happiness and my own is to turn my back upon her, and devote myself to hunting the Haygarths. It's rather hard too, just as I have begun to fancy that she likes me a little."

In the course of those interviews in Gray's Inn which occurred before Valentine took any active steps in his new pursuit, certain conditions were agreed upon between him and Mr. Sheldon. The first and most serious of these conditions was, that Captain Paget should be in nowise enlightened as to his _protege's_ plans. This was a strong point with George Sheldon. "I have no doubt Paget's a very good fellow," he said.

(It was his habit to call everybody a good fellow. He would have called Nana Sahib a good fellow, and would have made some good-natured excuse for any peccadilloes on the part of that potentate). "Paget's an uncommonly agreeable man, you know; but he is not the man I should care to trust with this kind of secret." Mr. Sheldon said this with a tone that implied his willingness to trust Captain Paget with every other kind of secret, from the contents of his j.a.panned office-boxes to the innermost mysteries of his soul.

"You see Paget is thick with my brother Phil," he resumed; "and whenever I find a man thick with my relations, I make it a point to keep clear of that man myself. Relations never have worked well in harness, and never will work well in harness. It seems to be against nature. Now Phil has a dim kind of idea of the game I want to play, in a general way, but nothing more than a dim idea. He fancies I'm a fool, and that I'm wasting my time and trouble. I mean him to stick to that notion. For, you see, in a thing of this kind there's always a chance of other people cutting in and spoiling a man's game. Of course, that advertis.e.m.e.nt I read to you was seen by other men besides me, and may have been taken up. My hope is that whoever has taken it up has gone in for the female branch, and got himself snowed up under a heap of doc.u.mentary evidence about the Judsons. That's another reason why we should put our trust in Matthew Haygarth. The Judson line is the obvious line to follow, and there are very few who would think of hunting up evidence for a hypothetical first marriage until they had exhausted the Judsons. Now, I rely upon you to throw dust in Paget's eyes, so that there may be no possibility of my brother getting wind of our little scheme through him."

"I'll take care of that," answered Valentine; "he doesn't want me just now. He's in very high feather, riding about in broughams and dining at West-end taverns. He won't be sorry to get rid of me for a short time."

"But what'll be your excuse for leaving town? He'll be sure to want a reason, you know."

"I'll invent an aunt at Ullerton, and tell him I'm going down to stop with her."

"You'd better not say Ullerton; Paget might take it into his head to follow you down there in order to see what sort of person your aunt was, and whether she had any money. Paget's an excellent fellow, but there's never any knowing what that sort of man will do. You'd better throw him off the scent altogether. Plant your aunt in Surrey--say Dorking."

"But if he should want to write to me?"

"Tell him to address to the post-office, Dorking, as your aunt is inquisitive, and might tamper with your correspondence. I daresay his letters will keep."

"He could follow me to Dorking as easily as to Ullerton."