Blind Policy Part 14

"Gentlemanly and honourable in this, after all," he said to himself; and he eagerly searched the papers to see if there was a note.

None, and with an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of disappointment he unlocked the table drawer, thrust in the rouleaux, locked them up, and then caught up the pieces of green tape again, to examine the blurred red seal.

"Eureka!" he muttered; "then here is the clue." He carefully cut off the seal and placed it in his pocket-book, after satisfying himself that the crest over the shield of armorial bearings was a mailed arm bent, the elbow only being clear. With this to guide him, he went to a book-case, and took down a Peerage, in the faint hope of finding the arms of some great family there; and he was still vainly searching when the servant knocked at the door to tell him that breakfast was ready.

Laura and his aunt were waiting in the dining-room, and their salute was a formal "Good-morning," after which the breakfast was partaken of in silence, and he rose to go back to his room.

"Will you see your patients this morning, Frederick?" said his aunt, as he reached the door.

He looked back at her sharply, and then glanced at his sister, who was watching him too.

"No," he said sharply. "I have important business--I am going out."

"But--"

Chester closed the door and hurried to his room. He knew what was about to be said, and he was in such an intense state of irritation, that he could not trust himself to reply, but took hat and coat directly, went out, and jumping into the first cab was driven to his club, where he spent the morning in the library, examining books on landed gentry, peerages, baronetages, everything he could find relating to armorial bearings, and finding crest after crest of mailed arms holding swords, daggers, spears, flowers, plumes, hearts, and arrows, but nothing which quite answered to the seal.

After a hasty lunch he went out to resume his search for the house, and for the next fortnight this was his life, seeking, and seeking in vain, for he found hundreds, each of which might very well have been that which he sought, till one afternoon he was walking down formal old streets of gloomy mansions, when his eyes lit upon a house, one of fifty almost alike, double-fronted with a broad entrance, and exactly what he felt the place must be that he sought. He had pa.s.sed it a dozen times before, but it had never impressed him, and with a strange feeling of elation, as he noted its gloomy aspect, uncleaned windows, and air of neglect, he grew certain that he had made the discovery at last.

The next thing was to note the number and examine a Directory, and walking rapidly on without daring to look for fear of being observed, he went to the end of the street, crossed over, and returned, read the half-obliterated number on the time-worn door as he rapidly pa.s.sed, and once more had himself driven to his club.

"Found at last," he muttered, as he opened the great Directory and found the number, and name, "Westcott."

Not much, but something within him made him feel that he was right, and he closed the book, drawing a deep breath, and went straight to the great grim street.

He had made no plans, but had determined upon a bold attack as the likeliest way of obtaining entrance. The old housekeeper would answer the door, and threats, cajoling, or bribery he was determined should be his pa.s.s-key, for see Marion and be a.s.sured of her safety he would, even, he told himself, if he had to use force.

For one moment only he hesitated before he plunged into the lion's jaws, as it were--should he speak to a policeman and tell him how to act if he did not soon return?

"No," he said; "it would be too cowardly, and I might injure her."

The next minute he had given a heavy peal on knocker and bell, listened to the hollow echoes raised within the forbidding place, and stood waiting for the opening of the door.

CHAPTER TEN.

THE BOOKWORM AT HOME.

As Chester waited for an answer to his summons the thought of the awkwardness of his position struck him, but he was strung up and determined to go on with his quest at all hazards. At the end of a minute there was no reply, and he knocked and rang again, with the hope rising that he was on the right tack at last, for the silence accorded with the mystery of the place he sought.

It was not until he had roused the echoes within the house for the third time that he heard the rattle of a chain being taken down; then the door was opened slowly, and Chester's heart sank as he found himself face to face with a dim-eyed, sleepy-looking old man, thin, stooping, and untidy of aspect, in his long, dusty dressing-gown and slippers. He was wearing an old-fashioned pair of round gla.s.s, silver-rimmed spectacles, whose ends were secured by a piece of black ribbon; and these he pushed up on his forehead as he turned his head side-wise and peered at the visitor.

"I'm afraid you knocked before, sir," he said in a quiet, dreamy tone.

"Yes--yes. I ought not to have come in this unceremonious way."

"Pray do not apologise," said the old gentleman, mildly. "I was busy reading, and did not hear."

He pushed his gla.s.ses a little higher and smiled in a pleasant, benevolent fashion, while at the first glance Chester saw that he was quite off the scent. For he gazed past the old man into the great hall whose walls were covered with book-shelves, while parcels and piles of volumes were heaped up in every available corner.

"I see that I have made a mistake," said Chester, hastily.

"Indeed?"

"I have come to the wrong house. I am very sorry. I am trying to find some people here."

"Yes? Well, houses are very much alike. Will you step in? I can perhaps help you. I think I have a Directory somewhere--somewhere, if I can lay my hand upon it, for I seldom use such a work, and I have so many books."

The old gentleman, whose appearance branded him as a dreamy, absorbed bookworm, drew back, and Chester involuntarily entered the hall, to note that with the book-cases away it would be such a place as he had visited; but while that was magnificently furnished, and pervaded by the soft glow of electric light, here all was dust and mouldering knowledge, the entrance suggesting that the rest of the house must be the same.

"Pray come in," said the old man, after closing the door; and he led the way into what had been intended for a large dining-room, but had been turned by its occupant into a library, packed with books from floor to ceiling; piles were upon the tables and chairs, and heaps here and there upon the dusty old Turkey carpet.

"Directory--Directory," said the old man, looking slowly round. "Books, books, books, but not the one we want."

"You seem to have a large and valuable library," Chester ventured to observe.

"Eh? Yes, I suppose so. The work of a long life, sir. But very dusty all over the house. What did you say was the name of the people you wanted?"

"I--that is," stammered Chester, confusedly, "I do not know their name.

Some patients whom I want to find out."

"Are you a doctor, sir?" said the old man, looking at his visitor with a benevolent smile. "Grand profession. I should have liked to have been a doctor. But is not that a very vague description? Names are so useful for distinguishing one person, place, or thing, from another.

But it was in this street, you say?"

"Well--er--no, I am not sure," said Chester, hurriedly.

"Dear me! that is rather perplexing," said the old man, taking off his spectacles and beginning to wipe them upon the tail of his dressing-gown. "But," he added, as if relieved, "the Directory would be of no use if you do not know the name."

"None whatever," said Chester, who was smarting with the thought that this pleasant old gentleman must take him for a lunatic. "Pray forgive me for troubling you in this unceremonious way."

"Oh, not at all, my dear sir, not at all. I have so few visitors, though," he added, "as you see I am surrounded by old friends."

"The same style of house--the same sort of hall," thought Chester, as he went out after a few more words had been exchanged. "Could it have been in this street?"

He looked up sharply at a heavy-faced butler and a tall, smart, powdered-headed footman, who were standing at the door of the next house, doing nothing, with the air of two men whose employers were out.

Chester looked eagerly at them and pa.s.sed by, but the door was nearly closed, and he could not see inside.

His sharp look was returned with interest, the two men evidently expecting him to come up the steps and address them, but he went on for a short distance in an undecided way, thinking deeply, and trying hard to see through the mental mist which shut him in. But a short time before he had felt convinced that he had found the house and been disappointed; now he felt quite as sure that the mansion where the two servants were standing must be the place. He had no special reason for coming to the conclusion, but all the same a curious feeling of attraction made him slacken his pace, angry and annoyed the while that he had not stopped and spoken to the men.

"Great heavens! What a vacillating moral coward I have grown," he said to himself. "What would have been easier?"

He said this but felt that the task was terribly hard, for it seemed such a childish thing to do--to go about asking folk if that was the house where some people lived who had fetched him to attend a man who had been shot, and kept him a prisoner for days and days before drugging him and having him shut up in a cab to be driven about in the middle of the night.

"Why, if I could explain all this to them," he said to himself at last, "they'd think I was a harmless kind of madman, troubled with memories of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, which I was trying to drag into everyday life like a Barber's hundredth brother, or a one-eyed Calendar.

Come, come, old fellow," he continued, as he mentally apostrophised himself; "go back home and prescribe for yourself, and then begin to show someone that you have been suffering from a strange mental vagary, brought about by over-excitement. She will believe it in time, and all may come right again. Ah! how like."

He started and hurried after an open carriage in which two ladies were seated. He only saw the profile of one of them very slightly, and her back as she pa.s.sed, but there was a turn of the figure--a particularly graceful air, as she leaned forward to give some instruction to the coachman--which struck him as being exactly similar to att.i.tudes he had seen Marion a.s.sume again and again when attending upon her brother.