Caught in a Trap Part 17

"I'm sure a girl can be as good a messenger as anyone else, and I can go at once," answered the governess, calmly; "indeed I'm so interested in my poor pupil, that I should like to do something towards finding her."

"Humph!" grunted the dowager, thinking it over.

"Certainly," put in the doctor; "certainly, madam. Bless my soul! I should like to know why not?"

The thing was agreed to after some further conversation, and Miss Kingscott, charged with a curt epistle from the dowager, and a supply of money from the doctor's own purse--the old lady had not hinted at producing any, and did not advance any demurrer to his so doing--for paying her expenses on the road, was directed to go to Hartwood Station.

She was to ask there whether they had seen Susan, and if she heard no intelligence, she was to proceed direct to London; there she was to call on the lawyers without losing time, explain the whole matter to Mr Trump, and tell him to come down at once--indeed, she was to bring him down with her if she could.

The governess obeyed her instructions to the letter, and acted all through as if she was as ignorant about Susan's disappearance and her movements as she had professed to be.

She asked about Susan in the village, in order that if any enquiries were made she could substantiate her statement of ignorance. Of course, n.o.body had heard there of the missing girl, as she very well knew would be the case. She then went on up to London by the next train, and proceeding at once to the offices to which she was directed, she handed the old lady's letter to the senior partner.

In the meantime, Doctor Jolly was attending to poor Tom's wounds; the wounded hero had pa.s.sed a very bad night, and was feverish and excitable.

The doctor, who had his suspicions about Markworth, asked one or two guarded questions of Tom as to the whereabouts of his friend. He had been surprised at not seeing the exquisite at Lady Inskip's pic-nic: with his downright common sense, aided by his dislike and suspicions of Markworth, he thought that there must be some connection at first between Susan's disappearance and the absence of the other.

Tom's answers to his questions, however, fairly puzzled him, and the doctor was thrown off the scent entirely.

Tom said, in reply to one of the doctor's casual enquiries, that he had driven Markworth over to Hartwood Station himself before he had gone on to the pic-nic. That his friend had been suddenly summoned up to town the previous morning, and that he expected him back very shortly, as he said he might not be detained long; although Tom added, "he had taken his traps with him."

"Oh, he has? has he!" answered the doctor. "Well, I daresay we'll have him down soon again though, and then you will be able to get about again with him."

He cheered up Tom, who was very crestfallen and hippish with the pain he had undergone, and the thoughts of being kept a prisoner in bed whilst he so much wished, particularly now on account of Lizzie, to be able to move about.

"Bless my soul!" said the old fellow, cheerfully, as he went out, "why, you will be right again in a jiffey. We have got all that beastly shot out of you, and the place is healing beautifully. I tell you what I will do, too, Master Tom," he added, nodding his head knowingly, with a twinkling of his kind grey eyes--"I'll tell a certain little girl how we are getting on; I know she will feel interested!"

"Thank you, doctor; you're a trump, by Jove!" said Tom, gladly, "and give her my compliments."

"Hang your compliments, you young rascal; I'll give you her love when I come back!" and the doctor laughed himself with a cheery ho! ho! ho! out of the room, down the staircase, to the dining-room below, where Mrs Hartshorne--the old lady looking quite broken already from the anxiety she had gone through--was waiting to hear his report about Tom.

They had decided not to tell him yet about Susan in his present state-- not, at all events, until the lawyer came down.

The doctor said Tom was doing very well, although excitement would be bad for him; and then went out to pay some calls around, promising to call back in a few hours' time.

You may be sure he did not forget, with his kind heart, to call round at the Pringles, where he found little Lizzie listening anxiously for his approach, for he had promised her last night to come and give the news about Tom.

She eagerly thanked him for coming and for his good news, and coyly gave the doctor permission to take back her love to Tom: of course, she was as much surprised as the doctor was to hear of Susan's disappearance, and her sympathies were quite aroused when he told her how broken the old lady seemed under the double trouble she was suffering under.

Lizzie immediately offered to go up and see her, not knowing her general disposition so well as our friend Aesculapius; but he told her that it would be useless, and that nothing could be done until the lawyer and the detective arrived from London. Lizzie was doubly anxious about Susan for Tom's sake: it is wonderful the interest that young ladies take in the sisters and other relatives of young gentlemen for whom they may entertain regard! But Lizzie could do nothing, and was even more useless in the juncture than the dowager had at first supposed the governess to be when she offered to make herself useful.

After paying his round of calls, the doctor returned to The Poplars, some three hours or more from the time of his setting out: and he and the dowager then sat down in sympathy and mutual anxiety together in the parlour, for the first time in their respective lives, to wait for the return of Miss Kingscott from her mission to London.

Thus the hours pa.s.sed by, the day after Susan Hartshorne's elopement.

Volume 2, Chapter IV.

MESSRS. TRUMP, SEQUENCE, AND CO.

Mrs Hartshorne's lawyers had their offices in one of the most palatial and dingy of that, whilom palatial, and now most dingy, collection of houses, which it would be sheer lunacy to christen a street,--yclept Bedford Row--that favourite abiding place and Mecca of the gentlemen of the "sheepskin" persuasion. The proprietress of The Poplars was one of the richest clients of the firm, who had for years done business for the family before the dowager's incorporation in it; but still it does not follow that Messrs. Trump, Sequence, and Co. got over many fees and costs from that long-headed lady. She employed them as a matter of course, for they had all the Hartshorne papers, but they got very little money out of her, or from the estate, since Roger Hartshorne, the old squire, died.

It was to these gentlemen that Miss Kingscott was introduced on coming up to London to fulfil the mission with which she had been entrusted.

It was good to see how the eyes of both partners glistened on hearing that, at last, some business was to be done for the Suss.e.x dowager.

Miss Kingscott related the particulars.

Mr Trump at first was surprised, but being of a keen, energetic turn of mind, he quickly determined how to act.

Having examined and cross-examined Miss Kingscott with regard to the dress and appearance of the girl, and so on--although he himself had frequently seen Susan too--he at once drew up the form of an advertis.e.m.e.nt for the lost girl, offering a reward of fifty pounds for her recovery.

He then rang his bell for one of the clerks in the outer office; and a grizzled old man, old but alert, with his hair standing on end, like a porcupine's quills, at once obeyed the summons.

"Here, Smiffens," said Mr Trump, giving him the paper he had just written, "copy that advertis.e.m.e.nt; take down copies to the morning papers, and have it inserted at once. By the way," he added, as Smiffens bustled out of the room, "take a copy, too, to the printers, and have five hundred handbills struck off for the police. Wait for them till they're done, and take them down to the central office. I'm just going down to Scotland Yard myself, and will tell them to expect the bills. Be sharp, mind! there's no time to lose."

As soon as the clerk had gone, Mr Trump turned to the governess who had been waiting all this time.

"Now, I'm at your service, Miss Kingscott," he said. "I shall be happy to accompany you down to Hartwood if you are going back at once." Miss Kingscott signified that that was her intention. "You won't mind my stopping at the police-station, will you? I want to pick a sharp detective there, whom I know, and get him to go down with us."

"Oh, dear no!" said Miss Kingscott; and after a very trifling delay, Miss Kingscott, the lawyer, and John Bounce, special detective, of Scotland Yard, were in the coupe of a first-cla.s.s carriage, and rattling down at express speed to Hartwood.

Arrived there, they managed to secure one of those extraordinary cabs or flys that are to be met with at country places, and which, I believe, are derelict London carriages that are thrown away by their former owners as worn out and useless: and after a short time they got to The Poplars, just as the doctor and the dowager, worn out with waiting, began to feel tired of the unusual pleasure of each other's company.

Matters having been explained over again, the detective, John Bounce, was set to work; and he, with that look of mystic preparation which the craft glory in, asked at once to be shown over the house. He examined every hole and corner as if he thought Susan had been purposely stowed away by the members of the family. When he was satisfied with an inspection of the house and garden, giving especial care to examining the various locks and appurtenances of the gates, he appeared to think profoundly for a short time, when he asked to be shown the clothes which Susan had left behind her. These gave him immense gratification, for he turned them over and over again, giving vent to sundry Lord Burleigh's shakings of the head, and portentous "humphs," as if he had the whole thing in his mind's eye.

Detectives, my dear sir, or madam, are not by any means such sharp personages as writers of fiction generally love to depict. There are some especially "cute" members of the force I don't for a moment deny; but as a cla.s.s their knowledge and acquirements are fearfully exaggerated. Indeed, I must be so severe as to call them at once, humbugs; but they deceive themselves quite as greatly and as often as they deceive the public, and are by no means so sharp as the malefactors they are set to catch. I think a clergyman I once knew would have made a far better detective than a good many real _mouchoirs_ I have come across. He had the gift of at once divining at the truth, investigating the morality and ethics of his parishioners which not one detective in a hundred possesses. They put on a great deal of mystery, and appear to "know all about it," but they are really much more shallow conjurers than Herr Frickell when, turning up the sleeves of his coat and his snow-white wristbands and calling his audience's attention to the theory that there is "no preparation, gentlemen! no preparation," at once proceeds to smuggle eggs up his sleeves with a "Hi, Presto! Begone!"

The detective placed great emphasis on the fact that Susan had taken Miss Kingscott's dress and bonnet with her. "Putting two and two together," as he said, he delivered himself of the oracular a.s.sertion, that she "must have gone off somewhere," which, of course, no one else would have dreamt of but the dowager, who observed snappishly that she could have told him that before, and advised him to try and find out where the girl had gone to, as that was what he had been employed for.

Whereupon, John Bounce appeared all at once to wake up to the notion that he would have to go somewhere else to look for the missing girl.

He asked if they had enquired about her at the nearest railway station, and was told they had; and on being further told that another station, Bigglethorpe, was also not far from The Poplars, he said she might have gone there, which was also perfectly feasible to the meanest comprehension.

At Bigglethorpe they found out that the station-master remembered a tall, dark gentleman getting out on the previous day, and coming back shortly afterwards with a lady. He thought it was the same, because now he remembered the gentleman had left his bag there, and had taken it, and gone off in the next up-train. On the detective's telling him to "Take care!" and mentioning that he was a policeman, which he generally found to have an awe-inspiring influence on the _gamins_ of London, the station-master said he could not tell him any more, not if he were "twenty detectives, and the Lord Mayor into the bargain, all rolled into one." He recollected a gentleman getting out there, he thought, and coming back again, and going up to London, and he believed he had a lady with him, but he would not be sure. It was "no use a pestering him with any more questions, for he had his own business to attend to about the traffic returns." He did not know who the gentleman was, nor the lady, and he "had not seen them afore or since, and didn't want to see 'em either, for that matter." There the enquiry ended, for the detective was at fault; and that is all they found out about Susan, after searching for days about the neighbourhood in every direction.

Nothing could be done now but to wait and see what effect the advertis.e.m.e.nts and handbills would have in discovering her whereabouts.

So Mr Trump and the detective had to go back to London as unsuccessful as when they had gone down; while Doctor Jolly and the old lady and Tom, who were all greatly grieved at the disappearance of the girl, could but wonder what had become of her. The only thing they had learnt for a certainty was that she was not in the county; and they could only hope that a good providence would watch over her, and bring her back to them safe: in the interim the police in the metropolis, with their wits sharpened by the reward offered, were doing all they could to ferret her out in London. And thus a month pa.s.sed by.

During all this time, Messrs. Trump, Sequence, and Co. had been fairly worried out of their wits, day and night, with false reports about the finding of Susan. More than a hundred persons had come to their offices brimful of the intelligence that they had secured the fugitive, and had seen her at all sorts of unheard of places; but the persons whom they thought to be Susan turned out to be totally unlike her in every particular. Mr Trump was for ever going with the police to inspect the bodies of drowned persons; and yet no trace was found of the missing girl, and he at last began to hope devoutly that she would be found soon, whether dead or alive he did not care which, for he was bothered to death about the matter. Indeed, he would have cheerfully given a handsome sum to have "washed his hands," as he often said to Sequence, who had a peculiar, parrot-like habit of repeating Trump's words after him, as if affirmatively, "of the whole affair." To which Sequence would nod his head, and respond sagaciously, "Certainly, of the whole affair."

When Markworth, therefore, after the search had lasted a month, walked into the office one morning just after his interview with the Jew, Solomonson, and told Mr Trump, who had accosted him graciously, thinking he was a new client, that he came about the advertis.e.m.e.nt for the lost girl, Mr Trump was wroth and slightly snappy.

"I hope to goodness you've really found her, and not come here with any c.o.c.k and bull story like the rest of 'em."

"I think you'll find," said Markworth, taking out the marriage certificate which he had brought with him, the advertis.e.m.e.nt, and a photographic likeness which he had had taken at Havre, "when you look at these, that I've found the girl, and am ent.i.tled to the reward you have offered."

"This is Susan, sure enough; but," he observed, "where's it taken?

Havre? Havre? How the devil did she get there?"

"I took her there," answered Markworth, in the most cool and collected manner, according to his wont; "and if you'll look at this certificate here you'll see that I had a perfect right to do so. She is my wife!"

"Whew!" whistled Mr Trump, through his closed teeth. "Your wife! Why, the girl's insane!"