Foul Play - Dion Boucicault (the best books to read txt) 📗

work a moment, for I know you have enough to do.”

The expert was secretly glad to be released from a case in which there were no materials; and so Helen escaped unobserved except by one of her own sex. She saw directly what Mrs. Undercliff had done for her, and lifted her sweet eyes, thick with tears, to thank her. Mrs. Undercliff smiled maternally, and next these two ladies did a stroke of business in the twinkling of an eye, and without a word spoken, whereof anon. Helen being once more composed, Mrs. Undercliff took up the prayerbook, and asked her with some curiosity what could be in that.

“Oh,” said Helen, “only some writing of Mr. Penfold. Mr. Undercliff does not want to see that; he is already sure Robert Penfold never wrote that wicked thing.”

“Yes, but I should like to see some more of his handwriting, for all that,” said the expert, looking suddenly up.

“But it is only in pencil.”

“Never mind; you need not fear I shall alter my opinion.”

Helen colored high. “You are right; and I should disgrace my good cause by withholding anything from your inspection. There, sir.”

And she opened the prayerbook and laid Cooper’s dying words before the expert; he glanced over them with an eye like a bird, and compared them with his notes.

“Yes,” said he, “that is Robert Penfold’s writing; and I say again that hand never wrote the forged note.”

“Let me see that,” said Mrs. Undercliff.

“Oh, yes,” said Helen, rather irresolutely; “but you look into the things as well as the writing, and I promised papa—”

“Can’t you trust me?” said Mrs. Undercliff, turning suddenly cold and a little suspicious.

“Oh, yes, madam; and indeed I have nothing to reproach myself with. But my papa is anxious. However, I am sure you are my friend; and all I ask is that you will never mention to a soul what you read there.”

“I promise that,” said the elder lady, and instantly bent her black brows upon the writing. And, as she did so, Helen observed her countenance rise, as a face is very apt to do when its owner enters on congenial work.

“You would have made a great mistake to keep this from me,” said she, gravely. Then she pondered profoundly; then she turned to her son and said, “Why, Edward, this is the very young lady who was wrecked in the Pacific Ocean, and cast on a desolate island. We have all read about you in the papers, miss; and I felt for you, for one, but, of course, not as I do now I have seen you. You must let me go into this with you.”

“Ah, if you would!” said Helen. “Oh, madam, I have gone through tortures already for want of somebody of my own sex to keep me in countenance! Oh, if you could have seen how I have been received, with what cold looks, and sometimes with impertinent stares, before I could even penetrate into the region of those cold looks and petty formalities! Any miserable straw was excuse enough to stop me on my errand of justice and mercy and gratitude.”

“Gratitude?”

“Oh, yes, madam. The papers have only told you that I was shipwrecked and cast away. They don’t tell you that Robert Penfold warned me the ship was to be destroyed, and I disbelieved and affronted him in return, and he never reproached me, not even by a look. And we were in a boat with the sailors all starved—not hungry; starved—and mad with thirst, and yet in his own agony he hid something for me to eat. All his thought, all his fear, was for me. Such things are not done in those great extremities of the poor, vulgar, suffering body, except by angels in whom the soul rises above the flesh. And he is such an angel. I have had a knife lifted over me to kill me, madam—yes; and again it was he who saved me. I owe my life to him on the island over and over again; and in return I have promised to give him back his honor, that he values far more than life, as all such noble spirits do. Ah, my poor martyr, how feebly I plead your cause! Oh, help me! pray, pray, help me! All is so dark, and I so weak, so weak.” Again the loving eyes streamed; and this time not an eye was dry in the little shop.

The expert flung down his tracing with something between a groan and a curse. “Who can do that drudgery,” he cried, “while the poor young lady— Mother, you take it in hand; find me some material, though it is no bigger than a fly’s foot, give me but a clew no thicker than a spider’s web, and I’ll follow it through the whole labyrinth. But you see I’m impotent; there’s no basis for me. It is a case for you. It wants a shrewd, sagacious body that can read facts and faces; and— I won’t jest any more, Miss Rolleston, for you are deeply in earnest. Well, then, she really is a woman with a wonderful insight into facts and faces. She has got a way of reading them as I read handwriting; and she must have taken a great fancy to you, for as a rule she never does us the honor to meddle.”

“Have you taken a fancy to me, madam?” said Helen, modestly and tenderly, yet half archly.

“That I have,” said the other. “Those eyes of yours went straight into my heart last night, or I should not be here this morning. That is partly owing to my own eyes being so dark and yours the loveliest hazel. It is twenty years since eyes like yours have gazed into mine. Diamonds are not half so rare, nor a tenth part so lovely, to my fancy.”

She turned her head away, melted probably by some tender reminiscence. It was only for a moment. She turned round again, and said quietly, “Yes, Ned, I should like to try what I can do; I think you said these are reports of his trial. I’ll begin by reading them.”

She read them both very slowly and carefully, and her face grew like a judge’s, and Helen watched each shade of expression with deep anxiety.

That powerful countenance showed alacrity and hope at first. Then doubt and difficulty, and at last dejection. Helen’s heart turned cold, and for the first time she began to despair. For now a shrewd person, with a plain prejudice in her favor and Robert’s, was staggered by the simple facts of the trial.

 

CHAPTER LIX.

MRS. UNDERCLIFF, having read the reports, avoided Helen’s eye (another bad sign). She turned to Mr. Undercliff, and, probably because the perusal of the reports had disappointed her, said, almost angrily: “Edward, what did you say to make them laugh at that trial? Both these papers say that ‘an expert was called, whose ingenuity made the court smile, but did not counterbalance the evidence.’”

“Why, that is a falsehood on the face of it,” said the expert, turning red. “I was called simply and solely to prove Penfold did not write the forged note; I proved it to the judge’s satisfaction, and he directed the prisoner to be acquitted on that count. Miss Rolleston, the lawyers often do sneer at experts; but then four experts out of five are rank impostors, a set of theorists, who go by arbitrary rules framed in the closet, and not by large and laborious comparison with indisputable documents. These charlatans are not aware that five thousand cramped and tremulous but genuine signatures are written every day by honest men, and so they denounce every cramped or tremulous writing as a forgery. The varieties in a man’s writing, caused by his writing with his glove on or off, with a quill or a bad steel pen, drunk or sober, calm or agitated, in full daylight or dusk, etc., etc., all this is a dead letter to them, and they have a bias toward suspicion of forgery; and a banker’s clerk, with his mere general impression, is better evidence than they are. But I am an artist of a very different stamp. I never reason a priori. I compare; and I have no bias. I never will have. The judges know this and the pains and labor I take to be right, and they treat me with courtesy. At Penfold’s trial the matter was easy; I showed the court he had not written the note, and my evidence crushed the indictment so far. How could they have laughed at my testimony? Why, they acted upon it. Those reports are not worth a straw. What journals were they cut out of?”

“I don’t know,” said Helen.

“Is there nothing on the upper margin to show?”

“No.”

“What, not on either of them?”

“No.”

“Show them me, please. This is a respectable paper, too, the Daily News.”

“Oh, Mr. Undercliff, how can you know that?”

“I don’t know it; but I think so, because the type and paper are like that journal; the conductors are fond of clean type; so am I. Why, here is another misstatement; the judge never said he aggravated his offense by trying to cast a slur upon the Wardlaws. I’ll swear the judge never said a syllable of the kind. What he said was, ‘You can speak in arrest of judgment on grounds of law, but you must not impugn the verdict with facts.’ That was the only time he spoke to the prisoner at all. These reports are not worth a button.”

Helen lifted up her hands and eyes in despair. “Where shall I find the truth?” said she. “The world is a quicksand.”

“My dear young lady,” said Mrs. Undercliff, “don’t you be discouraged. There must be a correct report in some paper or other.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said Undercliff. “I believe the reporters trundle off to the nearest public-house together and light their pipes with their notes, and settle something or other by memory. Indeed they have reached a pitch of inaccuracy that could not be attained without co-operation. Independent liars contradict each other; but these chaps follow one another in falsehood, like geese toddling after one another across a common.

“Come, come,” said Mrs. Undercliff, “if you can’t help us, don’t hurt us. We don’t want a man to talk yellow jaundice to us. Miss Rolleston must employ somebody to read all the other papers, and compare the reports with these.”

“I’ll employ nobody but myself,” said Helen. “I’ll go to the British Museum directly.”

“The Museum!” cried Mr. Undercliff, looking with surprise. “Why, they will be half an hour groping for a copy of the Times. No, no; go to Peele’s CoffeeHouse.” He directed her where to find that place; and she was so eager to do something for Robert, however small, that she took up her bag directly, and put up the prayerbook, and was going to ask for her extracts, when she observed Mr. Undercliff was scrutinizing them with great interest, so she thought she would leave them with him; but, on looking more closely, she found that he was examining, not the reports, but the advertisements and miscellanea on the reverse side.

She waited out of politeness, but she colored and bit her lip. She could not help feeling hurt and indignant. “Any trash is more interesting to people than poor Robert’s case,” she thought. And at last she said bitterly:

“Those advertisements seem to interest you, sir; shall I leave them with you?”

“If you please,” said the expert, over whose head, bent in dogged scrutiny, this small thunderbolt of feminine wrath passed unconscious.

Helen drove away to Peele’s Coffee House.

Mrs. Undercliff pondered over