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

the facts that had been elicited in this conversation; the expert remained absorbed in the advertisements at the back of Helen’s reports.

When he had examined every one of them minutely, he held the entire extracts up to the light, and looked through them; then he stuck a double magnifier in his eye, and looked through them with that. Then he took two pieces of card, wrote on them Re Penfold, and looked about for his other materials, to put them all neatly together. Lo! the profile of Robert Penfold was gone.

“Now that is too bad,” said he. “So much for her dove-like eyes, that you admired so. Miss Innocence has stolen that profile.”

“Stolen! she bought it—of me.”

“Why, she never said a word.”

“No; but she looked a look. She asked me, with those sweet imploring eyes, might she have it; and I looked yes. Then she glanced toward you, and put down a note. Here it is.”

“Why, you beat the telegraph, you two! Ten pounds for that thing! I must make it up to her somehow.”

“I wish you could. Poor girl, she is a lady every inch. But she is in love with that Penfold. I’m afraid it is a hopeless case.”

“I have seen a plainer. But hopeless it is not. However, you work your way, and I’ll work mine.”

“But you can’t; you have no materials.”

“No; but I have found a door that may lead to materials.”

Having delivered himself thus myteriously, he shut himself up in obstinate silence until Helen Rolleston called again, two days afterward. She brought a bag full of manuscript this time—to wit, copies in her own handwriting of eight reports, the Queen v. Penfold. She was in good spirits, and told Mrs. Undercliff that all the reports were somewhat more favorable than the two she had left; and she was beginning to tell Mr. Undercliff he was quite right in his recollection, when he interrupted her, and said, “All that is secondary now. Have you any objection to answer me a question?”

She colored; but said, “Oh, no. Ask me anything you like;” then she blushed deeper.

“How did you become possessed of those two reports you left with me the other day?”

At this question, so different from what she feared, Helen cleared up and smiled, and said, “From a Mr. Hand, a clerk in Mr. Wardlaw’s office; they were sent me at my request.”

The expert seemed pleased at this reply; his brow cleared, and he said: “Then I don’t mind telling you that those two reports will bring Penfold’s case within my province. To speak plainly, Miss Rolleston, your newspaper extracts—ARE FORGERIES.”

 

CHAPTER LX.

“FORGERIES!” cried Helen, with innocent horror.

“RANK FORGERIES,” repeated the expert coolly.

“Forgeries!” cried Helen. “Why, how can printed things be that?”

“That is what I should like to know,” said the old lady.

“Why, what else can you call them?” said the expert. “They are got up to look like extracts from newspapers. But they were printed as they are, and were never in any journal. Shall I tell you how I found that out?”

“If you please, sir,” said Helen.

“Well, then, I looked at the reverse side, and I found seven misprints in one slip, and five in the other. That was a great number to creep into printed slips of that length. The trial part did not show a single erratum. ‘Hullo!’ said I to myself; ‘why, one side is printed more carefully than the other.’ And that was not natural. The printing of advertisements is looked after quite as sharply as any other part in a journal. Why, the advertisers themselves cry out if they are misprinted!”

“Oh, how shrewd!” cried Helen.

“Child’s play,” said the expert. “Well, from that blot I went on. I looked at the edges, and they were cut too clean. A gentleman with a pair of scissors can’t cut slips out of a paper like this. They were cut in the printer’s office. Lastly, on holding them to the light, I found they had not been machined upon the plan now adopted by all newspapers; but worked by hand. In one word—forgeries!”

“Oh,” said Helen, “to think I should have handled forgeries, and shown them to you for real. Ah! I’m so glad; for now I have committed the same crime as Robert Penfold; I have uttered a forged document. Take me up, and have me put in prison, for I am as guilty as ever he was.” Her face shone with rapture at sharing Robert’s guilt.

The expert was a little puzzled by sentiments so high-flown and unpractical.

“I think,” said he, “you are hardly aware what a valuable discovery this may prove to you. However, the next step is to get me a specimen of the person’s handwriting who furnished you with these. The chances are he is the writer of the forged note.”

Helen uttered an exclamation that was almost a scream. The inference took her quite by surprise. She looked at Mrs. Undercliff.

“He is right, I think,” said the old lady.

“Right or wrong,” said the expert, “the next step in the inquiry is to do what I said. But that demands great caution. You must write a short civil note to Mr. Hand, and just ask him some question. Let me see. Ask him what newspapers his extracts are from, and whether he has got any more. He will not tell you the truth; but no matter, we shall get hold of his handwriting.”

“But, sir,” said Helen, “there is no need for that. Mr. Hand sent me a note along with the extracts.”

“The deuce he did. All the better. Any words in it that are in the forged note? Is Penfold in it, or Wardlaw?”

Helen reflected a moment, and then said she thought both those names were in it.

“Fetch me that note,” said Undercliff, and his eyes sparkled. He was on a hot scent now.

“And let me study the genuine reports, and compare what they say with the forged ones,” said Mrs. Undercliff.

“Oh, what friends I have found at last!” cried Helen.

She thanked them both warmly, and hurried home, for it was getting late.

Next day she brought Hand’s letter to Mr. Undercliff, and devoured his countenance while he inspected it keenly and compared it with the forged note.

The comparison was long and careful, but unsatisfactory. Mr. Undercliff could not conscientiously say whether Hand had written the forged note or not. There were pros and cons.

“We are in deeper water than I thought,” said he. “The comparison must be enlarged. You must write as I suggested, and get another note out of Mr. Hand.”

“And leave the prayerbook with me,” said Mrs. Undercliff.

Helen complied with these instructions, and in due course received a civil line from Mr. Hand, to say that the extracts had been sent him from the country by one of his fellow-clerks, and he had locked them up, lest Mr. Michael Penfold, who was much respected in the office, should see them. He could not say where they came from; perhaps from some provincial paper. If of any value to Miss Rolleston, she was quite at liberty to keep them. He added there was a coffee-house in the city where she could read all the London papers of that date. This letter, which contained a great many more words than the other, was submitted to Undercliff. It puzzled him so that he set to work, and dissected every curve the writer’s pen had made; but he could come to no positive conclusion, and he refused to utter his conjectures.

“We are in a deep water,” said he.

Finally, he told his mother he was at a standstill for the present.

“But I am not,” said Mrs. Undercliff. She added, after a while, “I think there’s felony at the bottom of this.”

“Smells like it to me,” said the expert.

“Then I want you to do something very clever for me.”

“What is that?”

“I want you to forge something.”

“Come! I say.”

“Quite innocent, I assure you.”

“Well, but it is a bad habit to commence.”

“All depends on the object. This is to take in a forger, that is all.”

The expert’s eyes sparkled. He had always been sadly discontented with the efforts of forgers, and thought he could do better.

“I’ll do it,” said he, gayly.

 

CHAPTER LXI.

 

GENERAL ROLLESTON and his daughter sat at breakfast in the hotel. General Rolleston was reading the Times, and his eye lighted on something that made him start. He looked toward Helen, and his first impulse was to communicate it to her. But, on second thoughts, he preferred to put a question to her first.

“You have never told the Wardlaws what those sailors said?”

“No, papa. I still think they ought to have been told; but you know you positively forbade me.”

“Of course I did. Why afflict the old gentleman with such a tale? A couple of common sailors, who chose to fancy the ship was destroyed.”

“Who are better judges of such a thing than sailors?”

“Well, my child, if you think so, I can’t help it. All I say is, spare the old gentleman such a report. As for Arthur, to tell you the truth, I have mentioned the matter to him.”

“Ah, papa! Then why forbid me to tell him? What did he say?”

“He was very much distressed. ‘Destroy the ship my Helen was in,’ said he. ‘If I thought Wylie had done that, I’d kill him with my own hand, though I was hanged for it next minute.’ I never saw the young fellow fire up so before. But when he came to think calmly over it a little while, he said: “I hope this slander will never reach my father’s ears; it would grieve him deeply. I only laugh at it.’ “

“Laugh at it! and yet talk of killing?”

“Oh, people say they laugh at a thing when they are very angry all the time. However, as you are a good girl, and mind what you are told, I’ll read you an advertisement that will make you stare. Here is Joseph Wylie, who, you say, wrecked the Proserpine, actually invited by Michael Penfold to call on him, and hear of something to his advantage.”

“Dear me!” said Helen, “how strange! Surely Mr. Penfold cannot know the character of that man. Stop a minute! Advertise for him? Then nobody knows where he lives? There, papa. You see he is afraid to go near Arthur Wardlaw; he knows he destroyed the ship. What a mystery it all is! And so Mr. Penfold is at home, after all; and not to send me a single line. I never met with so much unkindness and discourtesy in all my life.”

“Ah, my dear,” said the general, “you never defied the world before, as you are doing now.”

Helen sighed; but, presently recovering her spirit, said she had done without the world on her dear island, and she would not be its slave now.

As she was always as good as her word, she declined an invitation to play the lion, and, dressing herself in plain merino, went down that very evening to Michael Penfold’s cottage.

We run thither a little before her, to relate briefly what had taken place there.

Nancy Rouse, as may well be imagined, was not the woman to burn two thousand pounds. She locked the notes up; and after that night became very reserved on that head, so much so that, at last, Mr. Penfold saw it was an interdicted topic, and dropped it in much wonder.

When Nancy came to think of it in daylight, she could not help suspecting Wylie had some hand in it; and it occurred to her that the old gentleman,