The Crime and the Criminal Part 45

After he was gone I sat for ever so long in the drawing-room forming plans. The first wild notion had come to me before. I gave it form and fashion then. I, too, would buck the tiger. Why not? Who would have more cause than I? It is a peculiarity of my const.i.tution that, whatever the game, I always play better when the stakes are high.

I would win my friend, the gentleman. I would go the limit every time until I did.

In winning him I should win all. Everything my soul desired. At a single coup, the game.

First of all, I should win the man. He was well worth winning--just the man.

Then I should win social recognition. By becoming Mrs. Reginald Townsend I should be spared years of struggling--struggling, too, which might only bring failure at the end. He wanted a clever wife, and he should have her. He wanted a good wife, and he should have her too. He wanted a wife who believed in him; he would never meet one who believed in him more than I did. He wanted a wife with money; probably there was not in England half a dozen possible women who had as much as I had.

Given a wife who had all these things I doubted if there was a drawing-room in which he could not make her welcome--from the Queen's own drawing-room, downwards or upwards. Practically he could place Society--with a big S!--at her feet, to do with as she chose.

To think of it! What a realisation of one's dream. What a short and what an easy cut to the Kingdom of the Blest!

Again, in making him the captive of my sword and of my bow, I should be giving one to the daughter of Sir Haselton Jardine. That, also, would be worth the doing. To dislike any one is a mistake. I reminded myself of that over and over again. But I knew I hated her.

As to whether I should be able to win him--on that point I had no shadow of doubt. It was true that the overtures might have to come from me, but they should come. And when they came they should come in a guise which he would find resistless.

Or we should see!

I slept very well that night--soothed by my own fancies. I remember very well that, when I was in my bedroom, just before I got between the sheets, I looked at the hand which he had held in his, and, just where his hand pressed it, I kissed it. It was a silly thing to do, but it did me good.

I wondered if, when he had held her hand in his, she was silly too.

But, no doubt, she had freehold rights--or she thought that she had freehold rights--to what was much better worth the kissing.

Never mind! But bide a wee!

Days slipped by. At his next examination before the magistrates things began to look very black indeed against poor Tommy. I suppose the witnesses supposed they spoke the truth--so far as I could see, there was no possible cause for their wishing to do otherwise. But how they lied! Unconsciously, we will hope, and in their haste. It was becoming plainer and plainer that unless something, as yet wholly unsuspected, turned up in his favour, Tommy bade fair to hang.

Well, I have seen a man hung on suspicion of stealing a horse, and directly he was hung the horse in question has turned up underneath the thief that really stole him. As Mr. Townsend observed, sometimes it seems as if the innocent were born to hang. If everything in life were certain, where would be the sport, and what would be the use of betting?

It is the element of chance that makes the game!

One afternoon something happened which struck me as being distinctly curious. It was after lunch. I was thinking of taking the air. I had just gone into the drawing-room for a moment, when there came a knocking at the door.

"Now, who's that, I wonder?" I stopped the servant on her way to answer the door. "Eliza, let me know who it is before you say I'm in."

I knew who it was directly she opened the door. It was no good telling him that I was not in. He did not even ask. He came himself to see. It was old Jack Haines, and with him was a stranger.

It was the stranger who made me open my eyes. I had to stare. For he was--and yet he wasn't--the living, breathing image of my friend, the gentleman. He was Reginald Townsend, with a difference. And the difference--which was all the difference--was this: Reginald Townsend was a gentleman; this man was emphatically quite another kind of thing.

And Jack Haines treated him as if he was quite another kind of thing.

He treated him as if he had been nothing but a cur, and the man bore himself as if he was used to being treated like a cur.

Mr. Haines strode into the middle of the room. He pointed to the stranger.

"You see this creature?"

It was an awkward sort of introduction. I scarcely knew what to make of it. The more I looked at him, the more I wondered who the man could be.

"He's a detective--a private detective. That's what he calls himself.

If he is, he's the English kind. When first I landed on this darned old island I went to him, like the fool I was, and I said, 'I want to find my girl.' And he said, 'I'm the man to find her.' And I said, 'You are?' And he said, 'You bet. It's only a question of money, that's all it is.' And that's all it has been ever since--a question of money.

That's the only time he told the truth. If you knew the amount of money he's had out of me you would laugh. He kept thinking that he's found a clue, and wanting twenty pounds to find out if he'd found it, and every time he got that twenty pounds he found out he hadn't. And now he thinks he's found another clue, and I've brought him along with me in here to find out what sort of clue he thinks he has found."

The man coughed behind his hand. He puffed out his chest. He drew himself upright. He tried to think himself a man.

"You are severe, Mr. Haines, uncommonly severe. Even detectives are but fallible. But, on this occasion I do not only think I have a clue, I am positive--quite positive."

"What's the figure?"

"Figure? Expenses--merely!"

"And what's the clue?"

The man seemed a trifle fidgety.

"I am afraid that I am scarcely in a position at present----"

Mr. Haines cut him uncivilly short.

"Stow that! You don't touch a nickel till you tell me what's the clue."

The man cleared his throat. He looked round and round the room, as though looking for the clue. Mr. Haines's inquisition seemed more than he had bargained for.

"As you are aware, Mr. Haines, I have searched all England for Miss Louise O'Donnel."

"Judging from the amount of money you've had I should think you've searched all Europe."

Again the stranger cleared his throat, as if he deprecated the allusion.

"You probably have it in your recollection that at one time I believed that I had traced her to Liverpool. Circ.u.mstances have recently occurred which have brought to me the knowledge that in so believing I was right. She is in Liverpool."

Mr. Haines began to tremble like a leaf. I saw how easily this man, or any other man, could play upon what seemed to have become the dominating pa.s.sion of his existence.

"Whereabouts in Liverpool? Tell me that!"

"Unfortunately, at this moment, that is beyond the limit of my power.

But this I will undertake to do. If you are disposed to expend a further sum of fifty pounds I will undertake to place you in communication with her within, yes, certainly, within fourteen days."

"You swear it?"

The man threw himself into an att.i.tude which he, no doubt, intended to be sublime. "As one gentleman to another I undertake, sir, to do what I have said."

"You shall have your fifty pounds. I will go and get it. Stay here."

Mr. Haines turned to me. "Do you mind my leaving him here while I go and cash a cheque? I want to give him the money in your presence, and on conditions which you shall hear."

"I have no objection."

I had not. Indeed, I had been wondering how I might find the opportunity to ask the man a question which should be entirely between ourselves. Whether he was as willing to be left alone with me as I was to be left alone with him, is more than I can say. He ought to have been. Mr. Haines took me at my word. He stamped through the hall and from the house. The stranger and I were _tete-a-tete_.