The Ashiel Mystery - Mrs. Charles Bryce (novels to improve english TXT) 📗
- Author: Mrs. Charles Bryce
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Ince agrees with you, and is always at me about the poor man. Some day I
hope you will both see his sterling qualities."
"I am afraid you must think I have given you a great deal of trouble for
very little reason," Lord Ashiel said to Juliet. "But perhaps there will
be more result than at present can seem clear to you. I may go so far as
to say that I hope so most sincerely. But, if the secret of which I spoke
just now is ever to be confided to you, it will be necessary for you and
me to know each other a little better. I have a proposal to make to you,
which I fear you may think our acquaintance rather too short and
unconventional to justify."
He paused with a trace of embarrassment, and Juliet wondered what could
be coming.
"It is not convenient for me to stay in London just now," he went on
after a minute, "and I am sure you must find it very disagreeable at this
time of the year; and yet it is very important that I should see more of
you. It is, in fact, part of the conditions under which I may be able to
reveal these family secrets of yours to you. That is to say, if they
should turn out to be indeed yours. I came up from the Highlands last
night. I have a place on the West Coast, where at this moment I have a
party of people staying with me for shooting. My sister is entertaining
them in my absence, but I must get back to my duties of host. What I want
to suggest is that you should pay us a visit at Inverashiel."
"Thank you very much," said Juliet doubtfully. "I should love to, but--I
don't know whether my father would allow me."
"Your father?" exclaimed Lord Ashiel and Mr. Findlay in one breath.
"Sir Arthur Byrne, I mean," she corrected herself.
"You might telegraph to him," urged Lord Ashiel. "And I, myself, will
write. You might mention my sister to him. I think he used to know her.
Mrs. John Haviland. But, indeed, it is very important that you should
come, more important than you think, perhaps."
He seemed extraordinarily anxious, now, lest she should refuse.
"Perhaps," suggested Mr. Findlay, "Miss Byrne would like to think over
the idea, and let you know later in the day."
"A very good plan," said Lord Ashiel. "Yes, of course you would like to
think it over. Will you telephone to me at the Carlton after lunch?
Thanks so much. Good-bye for the present."
He seized his hat and stick and darted to the door. "You talk to her,
Findlay!" he cried, and disappeared.
Juliet and Mr. Findlay were left confronting one another.
"That will be the best plan," the lawyer repeated. "Think it over, Miss
Byrne. I am sure you would enjoy the visit to Scotland. Inverashiel is a
most interesting old place, both historically and for the sake of its
beautiful scenery. A week or two of Highland air could not fail to be of
benefit to your health, even if nothing further came of it, so to speak."
"I should love it," Juliet said again. "But, Mr. Findlay, I don't know
Lord Ashiel, or hardly know him. How can I go off and stay with someone I
never met before to-day?"
"The circumstances are unusual," said the lawyer. "I fancy Lord Ashiel is
anxious to lose no time. He is in bad health, poor fellow. I am afraid he
will worry himself a good deal if you cannot make up your mind to go."
"You see," said Juliet, troubled, "I know nothing about him. I don't know
what my father--I mean, Sir Arthur would say."
"I am sure your father would have no objection whatever to your making
friends with Lord Ashiel," Mr. Findlay assured her. "He is one of the
most respectable, the most domesticated of peers. Not very cheerful
company, perhaps, but no one in the world can justly say a word against
him in any way. He has had a sad time lately; his wife and only child
died within a month of each other, only two or three years ago. They had
been married quite a short time. Since then, his sister, Mrs. Haviland,
keeps house for him; but he does not entertain much, I am told, except
during the autumn in Scotland. You need have no hesitation in accepting
this invitation, Miss Byrne. I am a married man, and the father of a
family, and I should only be too delighted if one of my daughters had
such an opportunity."
"Well," said Juliet, "I think I will risk it, and go. I am old enough to
take care of myself, in any case." This she said haughtily, with her nose
in the air. And then, with a sudden drop to her usual manner, she
exclaimed in a tone of gaiety, "What fun it will be!"
"I am sure you will not regret your decision," repeated Mr. Findlay, as
she got up to go. "You won't forget to let Lord Ashiel know, will you?"
"No, I will telephone to him at once. But I will telegraph home too,
of course."
Excitement over this new plan had almost dispelled the earlier
disappointment, and if Juliet's spirits, as she drove back to Jermyn
Street, were not quite as overflowingly high as when she had started
out, they were good enough to make her smile to herself and to every one
she met during the rest of the day, and to hum gay little tunes when no
one was near, and altogether to feel very happy and pleased and
possessed by the conviction that something delightful was about to
happen. She sent off her telegram to Sir Arthur, spending some time over
it, and spoiling a dozen telegraph forms, before she could find
satisfactory words in which to convey her plans with an appearance of
deference to authority. Then she called up the Carlton Hotel on the
telephone, and was much put out when she heard that Lord Ashiel was not
staying there, or even expected.
It was the hall porter of her hotel who came to the rescue, by
suggesting that she should try the Carlton Club, of which she had never
before heard.
From the quickness with which Lord Ashiel answered her, he might have
been sitting waiting at the end of the wire, and he expressed great
pleasure at her acceptance of his invitation. Indeed, she could hear from
the tone of his voice that his gratification was no mere empty form. It
was arranged that she should travel down on the following night, Lord
Ashiel promising to engage a sleeping berth for her on the eight o'clock
train. He himself was going North that same evening. He had just been
writing a letter to Sir Arthur Byrne, he told her. He hoped she had some
thick dresses with her; she would want them in Scotland.
"I am afraid I haven't," she said. "I only expected to stay in London for
a day or two, you know."
"Well," said the voice at the end of the telephone, "perhaps you can get
a waterproof or something, between this and to-morrow night. I am afraid
I don't know the names of any ladies' tailors, but there are lots about,"
he concluded vaguely.
"I suppose I had better," said Juliet doubtfully. "I wonder if the
shops here will trust me. The fact is, I haven't got very much extra
money. I think perhaps I'd better wait a day or two till I can have
some more sent me."
"My dear child," came the answer in horrified tones, "you must on no
account put off coming. Of course you are not prepared for all this extra
expense. You must allow me to be your banker. I insist upon it. Your
family, in whose confidence I happen to be, would never forgive me if I
allowed you to continue to be dependent on Sir Arthur Byrne."
"It is very kind of you," Juliet began. "But suppose I turn out to be
some one different. You know, you said--"
"If you do, you shall repay me," he replied. "In the meantime I will
send you round a small sum to do your shopping with. Let me see, where
are you staying?"
An hour later a bank messenger arrived with an envelope containing £100
in notes. Juliet had never seen so much money in her life, and thought it
far too much. "I shall be sure to lose it," was her first thought. Her
second was to deposit it with the proprietor of the hotel; after which
she felt safer. Then, in huge delight, she sallied forth again with her
maid, the alluring memory of some of the shop windows into which she had
gazed that morning calling to her loudly; she had never thought to look
at those fascinating garments from the other side of the glass.
Intoxicating hours followed, in which a couple of tweed dresses were
purchased that seemed as if they must have been made on purpose for her;
nor were thick walking shoes, and country hats, and other accessories
neglected. By evening her room was strewn with cardboard boxes, and on
Wednesday more were added, so that a trunk to pack them in had to be
bought as well. The shops were very empty; Juliet had the entire
attention of the shop people, and revelled in her purchases. Time flew,
and she was quite sorry, as she drove to Euston on the following evening,
to think that she was leaving this fascinating town of London.
CHAPTER IV
On Tuesday afternoon, when Juliet, having hung up the telephone through
which she had been conversing with Lord Ashiel, hurried out to see what
Bond Street could provide her with, a little man was sitting writing in a
luxuriously furnished room in a flat in Whitehall. He was small and thin,
and possessed a pair of extraordinarily bright and intelligent brown
eyes, which saw a good deal more of what happened around him than perhaps
any other eyes within a radius of a mile from where he sat. He was, in
other words, observant to a very high degree; and, what was more
remarkable, he knew how to use his powers of observation. There was not a
criminal in the length and breadth of the country who did not wonder
uneasily whether he had really left the scene of his crime as devoid of
clues as he imagined, when he heard that the celebrated detective,
Gimblet, had visited the spot in pursuit of his investigations.
For this was the man, who, in a few years, had unravelled more apparently
insoluble mysteries, and caused the arrest of more hitherto evasive
scoundrels, than his predecessors had managed to secure in a decade. The
name of Gimblet was known and detested wherever a coiner carried on his
forbidden craft, or a blackmailer concocted his cowardly plans; burglars
and forgers cursed freely when he was mentioned, and there was hardly an
illicit trade in the country which had not suffered at one time or
another from his inquisitive habit of interesting himself in other
people's affairs. Scotland Yard officials were never too proud to call
upon him for help, and many a difficulty he had helped them out of,
though he refused an offer of a regular post in the Criminal
Investigation Department, preferring to be at liberty to choose what
cases he would take up. Above all things he loved the strange and
inexplicable. Gimblet had not always been a detective. Indeed, he often
smiled to himself when he thought of the extraordinary confidence which
the public now elected to repose in him.
No one was more conscious than himself that he was far from being
infallible; in fact, his admirers appeared to him to be wilfully blind to
that elementary truth; so that when he failed to bring a case to a
successful issue people were apt to show an amount of disappointment that
he, for his part, thought very unreasonable. It
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