Johnny Ludlow First Series Part 60

THE GAME FINISHED.

The clang of the distant church bell was ringing out for the daily morning service, and Miss Cattledon was picking her way across the road to attend to it, her thin white legs displayed, and a waterproof cloak on. It had rained in the night, but the clouds were breaking, promising a fine day. I stood at the window, watching the legs and the pools of water; Miss Deveen sat at the table behind, answering a letter that had come to her by the morning post.

"Have you ever thought mine a peculiar name, Johnny?" she suddenly asked.

"No," I said, turning to answer her. "I think it a pretty one."

"It was originally French: De Vigne: but like many other things has been corrupted with time, and made into what it is. Is that ten o'clock striking?"

Yes: and the bell was ceasing. Miss Cattledon would be late. It was a regular penalty to her, I knew, to go out so early, and quite a new whim, begun in the middle of Lent. She talked a little in her vinegar way of the world's wickedness in not spending some of its working hours inside a church, listening to that delightful curate with the mild voice, whose hair had turned prematurely grey. Miss Deveen, knowing it was meant for her, laughed pleasantly, and said if the many years' prayers from her chamber had not been heard as well as though she had gone into a church to offer them up, she should be in a poor condition now. I went with Miss Cattledon one Monday morning out of politeness. There were nine-and-twenty in the pews, for I counted them: eight-and-twenty being single ladies (to judge by the look), some young, some as old as Cattledon. The grey-haired curate was a.s.sisted by a young deacon, who had a black beard and a lisp and his hair parted down the middle. It was very edifying, especially the ten-minutes' gossip with the two clergymen coming out, when we all congregated in the aisle by the door.

"My great-grandfather was a grand old proprietor in France, Johnny; a baron," continued Miss Deveen. "I don't think I have much of the French nature left in me."

"I suppose you speak French well, Miss Deveen?"

"Not a word of it, Johnny. They pretended to teach it me when I was a child, but I'm afraid I was unusually stupid. Why, who can this be?"

She alluded to a ring at the visitors' bell. One of the servants came in and said that the gentleman who had called once or twice before had come again.

Miss Deveen looked up, first at the servant, then at me. She seemed to be considering.

"I will see him in two or three minutes, George"--and the man shut the door.

"Johnny," she said, "I have taken you partly into my confidence in this affair of the lost studs; I think I will tell you a little more.

After I sent for Lettice Lane here--and my impression, as I told you, was very strongly in favour of her innocence--it occurred to me that I ought to see if anything could be done to prove it; or at least to set the matter at rest, one way or the other, instead of leaving it to time and chance. The question was, how could I do it? I did not like to apply to the police, lest more should be made of it than I wished.

One day a friend of mine, to whom I was relating the circ.u.mstances, solved the difficulty. He said he would send to me some one with whom he was well acquainted, a Mr. Bond, who had once been connected with the detective police, and who had got his dismissal through an affair he was thought to have mismanaged. It sounded rather formidable to my ears, 'once connected with the detective police;' but I consented, and Mr. Bond came. He has had the thing in hand since last February."

"And what has he found out?"

"Nothing, Johnny. Unless he has come to tell me now that he has--for it is he who is waiting. I think it may be so, as he has called so early.

First of all, he was following up the matter down in Worcestershire, because the notion he entertained was, that the studs must have been taken by one of the Whitneys' servants. He stayed in the neighbourhood, pursuing his inquiries as to their characters and habits, and visiting all the p.a.w.nbrokers' shops that he thought were at available distances from the Hall."

"Did he think it was Lettice Lane?"

"He _said_ he did not: but he took care (as I happen to know) to worm out all he could of Lettice's antecedents while he was inquiring about the rest. I had the girl in this room at his first visit, not alarming her, simply saying that I was relating the history of the studs'

disappearance to this friend who had called, and desired her to describe her share in it to make the story complete. Lettice suspected nothing; she told the tale simply and naturally, without fear: and from that very moment, Johnny, I have felt certain in my own mind the girl is as innocent as I am. Mr. Bond '_thought_ she might be,' but he would not go beyond that; for women, he said, were crafty, and knew how to make one think black was white."

"Miss Deveen, suppose, after all, it should turn out to have been Lettice?" I asked. "Should you proceed against her?"

"I shall not proceed against any one, Johnny; and I shall hush the matter up if I can," she answered, ringing for Mr. Bond to be shown in.

I was curious to see him also; ideas floating through my brain of c.o.c.ked-hats and blue uniform and Richard Mayne. Mr. Bond turned out to be a very inoffensive-looking individual indeed; a little man, wearing steel spectacles, in a black frock-coat and grey trousers.

"When I last saw you, madam," he began, after he was seated, and Miss Deveen had told him he might speak before me, "I mentioned that I had abandoned my search in the country, and intended to prosecute my inquiries in London."

"You did, Mr. Bond."

"That the theft lay amongst Sir John Whitney's female servants, I have thought likely all along," continued Mr. Bond. "If the thief felt afraid to dispose of the emeralds after taking them--and I could find no trace of them in the country--the probability was that she would keep them secreted about her, and get rid of them as soon as she came to London, if she were one of the maids brought up by Lady Whitney. There were two I thought in particular might have done it; one was the lady's maid; the other, the upper-housemaid, who had been ill the night of their disappearance. All kinds of ruses are played off in the pursuit of plunder, as we have cause to learn every day; and it struck me the housemaid might have feigned illness, the better to cover her actions and throw suspicion off herself. I am bound to say I could not learn anything against either of these two young women; but their business took them about the rooms at Whitney Hall; and an open jewel-case is a great temptation."

"It is," a.s.sented Miss Deveen. "That carelessness lay at my door, and therefore I determined never to prosecute in this case; never, in fact, to bring the offender to open shame of any sort in regard to it."

"And that has helped to increase the difficulty," remarked Mr. Bond.

"Could the women have been searched and their private places at Whitney Hall turned out, we might or might not have found the emeralds; but----"

"I wouldn't have had it done for the Lord Chancellor, sir," interrupted Miss Deveen, hotly. "_One_ was searched, and that was quite enough for me, for I believe her to be innocent. If you can get at the right person quietly, for my own satisfaction, well and good. My instructions went so far, but no farther."

Mr. Bond took off his spectacles for a minute, and put them on again.

"I understood this perfectly when I took the business in hand," he said quietly. "Well, madam, to go on. Lady Whitney brought her servants to London, and I came up also. Last night I gleaned a little light on the matter."

He paused, and put his hand into his pocket. I looked, and Miss Deveen looked.

"Should you know the studs again?" he asked her.

"You may as well ask me if I should know my own face in the gla.s.s, Mr.

Bond. Of course I should."

Mr. Bond opened a pill-box: three green studs lay in it on white cotton.

He held it out to Miss Deveen.

"Are these they?"

"No, certainly not," replied Miss Deveen, speaking like one in disappointment. "_Those_ are not to be compared with mine, sir."

Mr. Bond put the lid on the box, and returned it to his pocket. Out came another box, long and thin.

"These are my studs," quickly exclaimed Miss Deveen, before she had given more than a glance. "You can look yourself for the private marks I told you about, Mr. Bond."

Three brilliant emeralds, that seemed to light up the room, connected together by a fine chain of gold. At either end, the chain was finished off by a small square plate of thin gold, on one of which was an engraved crest, on the other Miss Deveen's initials. In shape the emeralds looked like b.u.t.tons more than studs.

"I never knew they were linked together, Miss Deveen," I exclaimed in surprise.

"Did you not, Johnny?"

Never. I had always pictured them as three loose studs. Mr. Bond, who no doubt had the marks by heart before he brought them up, began shutting them into the box as he had the others.

"Antic.i.p.ating from the first that the studs would most probably be found at a p.a.w.nbroker's, if found at all, I ventured to speak to you then of a difficulty that might attend the finding," said he to Miss Deveen.

"Unless a thing can be legally proved to have been stolen, a p.a.w.nbroker cannot be forced to give it up. And I am under an engagement to return these studs to the p.a.w.nbroker, whence I have brought them, in the course of the morning."

"You may do so," said Miss Deveen. "I dare say he and I can come to an amicable arrangement in regard to giving them up later. My object has been to discover who stole them, not to bring trouble or loss upon p.a.w.nbrokers. How did you discover them, Mr. Bond?"

"In a rather singular manner. Last evening, in making my way to Regent Street to a place I had to go to on business, I saw a young woman turn out of a p.a.w.nbroker's shop. The shutters were put up, but the doors were open. Her face struck me as being familiar; and I remembered her as Lady Whitney's housemaid--the one who had been ill in bed, or pretended to be, the night the studs were lost. Ah, ah, I thought, some discovery may be looming up here. I have some acquaintance with the proprietor of the shop; a very respectable man, who has become rich by dint of hard, honest work, and is a jeweller now as well as a p.a.w.nbroker. My own business could wait, and I went in and found him busy with accounts in his private room. He thought at first I had only called in to see him in pa.s.sing. I gave him no particulars; but said I fancied a person in whom I was professionally interested, had just been leaving some emerald studs in his shop."

"What is the p.a.w.nbroker's name?" interrupted Miss Deveen.

"James. He went to inquire, and came back, saying that his a.s.sistant denied it. There was only one a.s.sistant in the shop: the other had left for the night. This a.s.sistant said that no one had been in during the last half-hour, excepting a young woman, a cousin of his wife's; who did not come to pledge anything, but simply to say how-d'ye-do, and to ask where they were living now, that she might call and see the wife. Mr.

James added that the man said she occupied a good situation in the family of Sir John and Lady Whitney, and was not likely to require to pledge anything. Plausible enough, this, you see, Miss Deveen; but the coincidence was singular. I then told James that I had been in search for these two months of some emerald studs lost out of Sir John Whitney's house. He stared a little at this, paused a moment in thought, and then asked whether they were of unusual value and very beautiful.

Just so, I said, and minutely described them. Mr. James, without another word, went away and brought the studs in. Your studs, Miss Deveen."