Run to Earth - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (ebook reader .txt) 📗

river, below Wapping, on the third of April, 1836. That’s

a very queer business, that is, and I’ve never had leisure to get very

deep into the rights and wrongs of it yet.”

 

Mr. Larkspur looked up presently, and saw that his visitor’s face had

grown white to the very lips.

 

“You knew Captain Jernam?” he said.

 

“No—yes, I knew him slightly; and the idea of his murder is very

shocking to me,” answered Honoria, struggling with her agitation. “Do

you expect to discover the secret of that dreadful crime?”

 

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Andrew Larkspur, with the

careless and business-like tone of a man to whom a murder is an

incident of trade. “You see, when these things have gone by for a long

time, without anything being found out about them, the secret generally

comes out by accident, if it ever comes out at all. There are cases in

which the secret never does come out; but there are not many such

cases. There’s a deal in accident; and a man of my profession must be

always on the look-out for accident, or he’ll lose a great many

chances. You see those red marks stuck here and there, among all that

writing in blue ink. Those red marks are set against the facts that

seem pretty clear and straightforward; the blue marks are set against

facts that seem dark. You see, there’s more blue marks than red. That

means that it’s a dark case.”

 

Honoria Eversleigh bent over the old man’s shoulder, and read a few

fragmentary lines, here and there, in the page beneath her.

 

“_Seen at the ‘Jolly Tar’, Ratcliff Highway, a low public-house

frequented by sailors. Seen with two men, Dennis Wayman, landlord of

the ‘Jolly Tar,’ and a man called Milson, or Milsom. The man Milson, or

Milsom, has since disappeared. Is believed to have been transported,

but is not to be heard of abroad._”

 

A little below these entries was another, which seemed to Honoria

Eversleigh to be inscribed in letters of fire:—

 

“Valentine Jernam was known to have fallen in love with a girl who

sang at the ‘Jolly Tar’ public-house, and it is supposed that he was

lured to his death by the agency of this girl. She is described as

about seventeen years of age, very handsome, dark eyes, dark hair—”

 

Mr. Larkspur closed the volume before Lady Eversleigh could read

further. She returned to her seat, still terribly pale, and with a

sickening pain at her heart.

 

All the shame and anguish of her early life, the unspeakable horror of

her girlhood, had been brought vividly back to her by the perusal of

the memoranda in the detective’s ledger.

 

“I mean to try my luck yet at getting at the bottom of the mystery,”

said Andrew Larkspur. “Five hundred pounds reward is worth working for.

I—I’ve a notion that I shall lay my hands upon Valentine Jernam’s

murderer sooner or later.”

 

“Who offers the reward?” asked Honoria.

 

“Government offers one hundred of it; George Jernam four hundred more.”

 

“Who is George Jernam?”

 

“The captain’s younger brother—a merchant-captain himself—the owner

of several vessels, and, I believe, a rich man. He came here,

accompanied by a queer-looking fellow, called Joyce Harker—a kind of

clerk, I believe—who was very much attached to the murdered man.”

 

“Yes—yes, I know,” murmured Honoria.

 

She had been so terribly agitated by the mention of Valentine Jernam’s

name, that her presence of mind had entirely abandoned her.

 

“You knew that humpbacked clerk!” exclaimed Mr. Larkspur.

 

“I have heard of him,” she faltered.

 

There was a pause, during which Lady Eversleigh recovered in some

degree from the painful emotion caused by memories so unexpectedly

evoked.

 

“I may as well give you some preliminary instructions to-day,” she

said, re-assuming her business-like tone, “and I will write you a

cheque for the first month of your service.”

 

Mr. Larkspur lost no time in providing his visitor with pen and ink.

She took a cheque-book from her pocket, and filled in a cheque for

eighty pounds in Andrew Larkspur’s favour.

 

The cheque was signed “Harriet Eden.”

 

“When you present that, you will be able to ascertain that your future

payments will be secure,” she said.

 

She handed the cheque to Mr. Larkspur, who looked at it with an air of

assumed indifference, and slipped it carelessly into his waistcoat

pocket.

 

“And now, ma’am,” he said, “I am ready to receive your instructions.”

 

“In the first place,” said Honoria, “I must beg that you will on no

occasion attempt to pry into my motives, whatever I may require of

you.”

 

“That, ma’am, is understood. I have nothing to do with the motives of

my employers, and I care nothing about them.”

 

“I am glad to hear that,” replied Honoria. “The business in which I

require your aid is a very strange one; and the time may come when you

will be half-inclined to believe me mad. But, whatever I do, however

mysterious my actions may be, think always that a deeply rooted purpose

lies beneath them; and that every thought of my brain—every trivial

act of my life, will shape itself to one end.”

 

“I ask no questions, ma’am.”

 

“And you will serve me faithfully—blindly?”

 

“Yes, ma’am; both faithfully and blindly.”

 

“I think I may trust you,” replied Honoria, very earnestly “And now I

will speak freely. There are two men upon whose lives I desire to place

a spy. I want to know every act of their lives, every word they speak,

every secret of their hearts—I wish to be an unseen witness of their

lonely hours, an impalpable guest at every gathering in which they

mingle. I want to be near them always in spirit, if not in bodily

presence. I want to track them step by step, let their ways be never so

dark and winding. This is the purpose of my life; but I am a woman—

powerless to act freely—bound and fettered as women only are fettered.

Do you begin to understand now what I require of you.”

 

“I think I do.”

 

“Mr. Larkspur,” continued Honoria, with energy. “I want you to be my

second self. I want you to be the shadow of these two men. Wherever

they go, you must follow—in some shape or other you must haunt them,

by night and day. It is, of course, a difficult task which I demand of

you. You have to decide whether it is impossible.”

 

“Impossible! ma’am—not a bit of it. Nothing is impossible to a man who

has served twenty years’ apprenticeship as a Bow Street runner. You

don’t know what we old Bow Street hands can do when we’re on our

mettle. I’ve heard a deal of talk about Fooshay, that was at the head

of Bonaparty’s police—but bless your heart, ma’am, Fooshay was a fool

to us. I’ve done as much and more than what you talk of before to-day.

All you have to do is to give me the names and descriptions of the two

men I am to watch, and leave all the rest to me.”

 

“One of these two men is Sir Reginald Eversleigh, Baronet, a man of

small fortune—a bachelor, occupying lodgings in Villiers Street. I

have reason to believe that he is dissipated, a gamester, and a

reprobate.”

 

“Good,” said Mr. Larkspur, who jotted down an occasional note in a

greasy little pocket-book.

 

“The second person is a medical practitioner, called Victor

Carrington—a Frenchman, but a perfect master of the English language,

and a man whose youth has been spent in England. The two men are firm

friends and constant associates. In keeping watch upon the actions of

one, you cannot fail to see much of the other.

 

“Very good, ma’am; you may make your mind easy,” answered the

detective, as coolly as if he had just received the most common-place

order.

 

He escorted Honoria to the door of his chambers, and left her to

descend the dingy staircase as best as she might.

 

CHAPTER XVI.

 

WAITING AND WATCHING.

 

Valentine Jernam’s younger brother, George, had journeyed to and fro on

the high seas five years since the murder of the brave and generous-hearted sea-captain.

 

Things had gone well with Captain George Jernam, and in the whole of

the trading navy there were few richer men than the owner of the

‘Pizarro’, ‘Stormy Petrel’, and ‘Albatross’.

 

With these three vessels constantly afloat. George Jernam was on the

high road to fortune.

 

His life had not been by any means uneventful since the death of his

brother, though that mysterious calamity had taken away the zest from

his success for many a day, and though he no longer cherished the same

visions of a happy home in England, when his circumstances should have

become so prosperous as to enable him to “settle down.” This same

process of settling down was one by no means congenial to George

Jernam’s disposition at any time; and he was far less likely to take to

it kindly now, than when “dear old Val”—as he began to call his

brother in his thoughts once more, when the horror of the murder had

begun to wear off, and the lost friend seemed again familiar—had been

the prospective sharer of the retirement which was to be so tranquil,

so comfortable, and so well-earned. It had no attraction for George at

all; for many a long day after Joyce Harker’s letter had reached him he

never dwelt upon it; he set his face hard against his grief, and worked

on, as men must work, fortunately for them, under all chances and

changes of this mortal life, until the last change of all. At first,

the thirst for revenge upon his brother’s murderers had been hot and

strong upon George Jernam—almost as hot and strong as it had been, and

continued to be, upon Joyce Harker; but the natures of the men differed

materially. George Jernam had neither the dogged persistency nor the

latent fierceness of his dead brother’s friend and prot�g�; and the

long, slow, untiring watching to which Harker devoted himself would

have been a task so uncongenial as to be indeed impossible to the more

open, more congenial temperament of the merchant-captain.

 

He had responded warmly to Harker’s letters; he had more than

sanctioned the outlay which he had made, in money paid and money

promised, to the skilled detective to whom Harker had entrusted the

investigation of the murder of Valentine Jernam. He had awaited every

communication with anxious interest and suspense, and he had never

landed after a voyage, and received the letters which awaited his

arrival, without a keen revival of the first sharp pang that had smote

him with the tidings of his brother’s fate.

 

Happily George Jernam was a busy man, and his life was full of variety,

adventure, and incident. In time he began, not to forget, indeed, but

to remember less frequently and less painfully, the manner of his

brother’s death, and to regard the fixed purpose of Joyce Harker’s life

as more or less of a harmless delusion. A practical man in his own way,

George Jernam had very vague ideas concerning the lives of the criminal

classes, and the faculties and facilities of the science of detection;

and the hope of finding out the secret of his brother’s fate had long

ago deserted him.

 

Only once had he and Joyce Harker met since the murder of Valentine

Jernam. George had landed a cargo at Hamburg, and had given his

brother’s friend rendezvous there. Then the two men had talked of all

that had been done so vainly, and all that remained to be done, Harker