The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective - Catherine Louisa Pirkis (read aloud books .TXT) 📗

write to you by the next mail on the matter, was utterly powerless to prevent his so doing. This young man, like Miss Monroe and the O’Gradys, also landed at Plymouth. I had only arrived so far in my investigation when I went to your house yesterday afternoon. By chance, as I waited a few minutes in your drawing-room, another important item of information was acquired. A fragment of conversation between your nephew and the supposed Miss Monroe fell upon my ear, and one word spoken by the young lady convinced me of her nationality. That one word was the monosyllable ‘Hush.’”

“No! You surprise me!”

“Have you never noted the difference between the ‘hush’ of an Englishman and that of an Irishman? The former begins his ‘hush’ with a distinct aspirate, the latter with as distinct a W. That W is a mark of his nationality which he never loses. The unmitigated ‘whist’ may lapse into a ‘whish’ when he is is transplanted to another soil, and the ‘whish’ may in course of time pass into a ‘whush,’ but to the distinct aspirate of the English ‘hush,’ he never attains. Now Miss O’Grady’s was as pronounced a ‘whush’ as it was possible for the lips of a Hibernian to utter.”

“And from that you concluded that Mary O’Grady was playing the part of Miss Monroe in my house?”

“Not immediately. My suspicions were excited, certainly; and when I went up to her room, in company with Mrs. Hawke’s maid, those suspicions were confirmed. The orderliness of that room was something remarkable. Now, there is the orderliness of a lady in the arrangement of her room, and the orderliness of a maid, and the two things, believe me, are widely different. A lady, who has no maid, and who has the gift of orderliness, will put things away when done with, and so leave her room a picture of neatness. I don’t think, however, it would for a moment occur to her to pull things so as to be conveniently ready for her to use the next time she dresses in that room. This would be what a maid, accustomed to arrange a room for her mistress’s use, would do mechanically. Miss Monroe’s room was the neatness of a maid—not of a lady, and I was assured by Mrs. Hawke’s maid that it was a neatness accomplished by her own hands. As I stood there, looking at that room, the whole conspiracy—if I may so call it—little by little pieced itself together, and became plain to me. Possibilities quickly grew into probabilities, and these probabilities once admitted, brought other suppositions in their train. Now, supposing that Miss Monroe and Mary O’Grady had agreed to change places, the Pekin heiress, for the time being, occupying Mary O’Grady’s place in the humble home at Cork and vice versa, what means of communicating with each other had they arranged? How was Mary O’Grady to know when she might lay aside her assumed rôle and go back to her mother’s house. There was no denying the necessity for such communication; the difficulties in its way must have been equally obvious to the two girls. Now, I think we must admit that we must credit these young women with having hit upon a very clever way of meeting those difficulties. An anonymous and startling missive sent to you would be bound to be mentioned in the house, and in this way a code of signals might be set up between them that could not direct suspicion to them. In this connection, the Danvers crest, which it is possible that they mistook for a dagger, suggested itself naturally, for no doubt Miss Monroe had many impressions of it on her lover’s letters. As I thought over these things, it occurred to me that possibly dagger (or cross) number one was sent to notify the safe arrival of Miss Monroe and Mrs. O’Grady at Cork. The two daggers or crosses you subsequently received were sent on the day of Mr. Danvers’s arrival at Plymouth, and were, I should say, sketched by his hand. Now, was it not within the bounds of likelihood that Miss Monroe’s marriage to this young man, and the consequent release of Mary O’Grady from the onerous part she was playing, might be notified to her by the sending of three such crosses or daggers to you. The idea no sooner occurred to me than I determined to act upon it, forestall the sending of this latest communication, and watch the result. Accordingly, after I left your house yesterday, I had a sketch made of three daggers of crosses exactly similar to those you had already received, and had it posted to you so that you would get it by the first post. I told off one of our staff at Lynch Court to watch your house, and gave him special directions to follow and report on Miss O’Grady’s movements throughout the day. The results I anticipated quickly came to pass. About half-past nine this morning the man sent a telegram to me from your house to the Charing Cross Hotel, and furthermore had ascertained that she had since despatched a telegram, which (possibly by following the hotel servant who carried it to the telegraph office), he had overheard was addressed to Mrs. O’Grady, at Woburn Place, Cork. Since I received this information an altogether remarkable cross-firing of telegrams has been going backwards and forwards along the wires to Cork.”

“A cross-firing of telegrams! I do not understand.”

“In this way. So soon as I knew Mrs. O’Grady’s address I telegraphed to her, in her daughter’s name, desiring her to address her reply to 1154 Gower Street, not to Charing Cross Hotel. About three-quarters of an hour afterwards I received in reply this telegram, which I am sure you will read with interest.

Here Loveday handed a telegram—one of several that lay on her writing-table—to Mr. Hawke.

He opened it and read aloud as follows:

“Am puzzled. Why such hurry? Wedding took place this morning. You will receive signal as agreed to-morrow. Better return to Tavistock Square for the night.”

“The wedding took place this morning,” repeated Mr. Hawke blankly. “My poor old friend! It will break his heart.”

“Now that the thing is done past recall we must hope he will make the best of it,” said Loveday. “In reply to this telegram,” she went on, “I sent another, asking as to the movements of the bride and bridegroom, and got in reply this:”

Here she read aloud as follows:

“They will be at Plymouth to-morrow night; at Charing Cross Hotel and next day, as agreed.”

“So, Mr. Hawke,” she added, “if you wish to see your old friend’s daughter and tell her what you think of the part she has played, all you will have to do will be to watch the arrival of the Plymouth trains.”

“Miss O’Grady has called to see a lady and gentleman,” said a maid at that moment entering.

“Miss O’Grady!” repeated Mr. Hawke in astonishment.

“Ah, yes, I telegraphed to her, just before you came in, to come here to meet a lady and gentlemen, and she, no doubt thinking that she would find here the newly-married pair, has, you see, lost no time in complying with my request. Show the lady in.”

“It’s all so intricate—so bewildering,” said Mr. Hawke, as he lay back in his chair. “I can scarcely get it all into my head.”

His bewilderment, however, was nothing compared with that of Miss O’Grady, when she entered the room and found herself face to face with her late guardian, instead of the radiant bride and bridegroom whom she had expected to meet.

She stood silent in the middle of the room, looking the picture of astonishment and distress.

Mr. Hawke also seemed a little at a loss for words, so Loveday took the initiative.

“Please sit down,” she said, placing a chair for the girl. “Mr. Hawke and I have sent to you in order to ask you a few questions. Before doing so, however, let me tell you that the whole of your conspiracy with Miss Monroe has been brought to light, and the best thing you can do, if you want your share in it treated leniently, will be to answer our questions as fully and truthfully as possible.”

The girl burst into tears. “It was all Miss Monroe’s fault from beginning to end,” she sobbed. “Mother didn’t want to do it—I didn’t want to—to go into a gentleman’s house and pretend to be what I was not. And we didn’t want her hundred pounds—”

Here sobs checked her speech.

“Oh,” said Loveday contemptuously, “so you were to have a hundred pounds for your share in this fraud, were you?”

“We didn’t want to take it,” said the girl, between hysterical bursts of tears; “but Miss Monroe said if we didn’t help her someone else would, and so I agreed to—”

“I think,” interrupted Loveday, “that you can tell us very little that we do not already know about what you agreed to do. What we want you to tell us is what has been done with Miss Monroe’s diamond necklace—who has possession of it now?”

The girl’s sobs and tears redoubled. “I’ve had nothing to do with the necklace—it has never been in my possession,” she sobbed. “Miss Monroe gave it to Mr. Danvers two or three months before she left Pekin, and he sent it on to some people he knew in Hong Kong, diamond merchants, who lent him money on it. Decastro, Miss Monroe said, was the name of these people.”

“Decastro, diamond merchant, Hong Kong. I should think that would be sufficient address,” said Loveday, entering it in a ledger; “and I suppose Mr. Danvers retained part of that money for his own use and travelling expenses, and handed the remainder to Miss Monroe to enable her to bribe such creatures as you and your mother, to practice a fraud that ought to land both of you in jail.”

The girl grew deadly white. “Oh, don’t do that—don’t send us to prison!” she implored, clasping her hands together. “We haven’t touched a penny of Miss Monroe’s money yet, and we don’t want to touch a penny, if you’ll only let us off! Oh, pray, pray, pray be merciful!”

Loveday looked at Mr. Hawke.

He rose from his chair. “I think the best thing you can do,” he said, “will be to get back home to your mother at Cork as quickly as possible, and advise her never to play such a risky game again. Have you any money in your purse? No—well then here’s some for you, and lose no time in getting home. It will be best for Miss Monroe—Mrs. Danvers I mean—to come to my house and claim her own property there. At any rate, there it will remain until she does so.”

As the girl, with incoherent expressions of gratitude, left the room, he turned to Loveday.

“I should like to have consulted Mrs. Hawke before arranging matters in this way,” he said a little hesitatingly; “but still, I don’t see that I could have done otherwise.”

“I feel sure Mrs. Hawke will approve what you have done when she hears all the circumstance of the case,” said Loveday.

“And,” continued the old clergyman, “when I write to Sir George, as, of course, I must immediately, I shall advise him to make the best of a bad bargain, now that the thing is done. ‘Past cure should be past care;’ eh, Miss Brooke? And, think! what a narrow escape my nephew, Jack, has had!”

VI. THE GHOST OF FOUNTAIN LANE.

“WILL you be good enough to tell me how you procured my address?” said Miss Brooke, a little irritably. “I left strict orders that it was to be given to no one.”

“I only obtained it with great difficulty from Mr. Dyer;