My Strangest Case - Guy Newell Boothby (romantic story to read TXT) 📗

" 'HOW DO YOU DO, MR. FAIRFAX?' SAID MISS KITWATER."

"How do you do, Mr. Fairfax?" said Miss Kitwater, giving me her hand as she spoke. "It is kind indeed of you to come down. I hope you have good news for us?"

"I am inclined to consider it good news myself," I said. "I hope you will think so too."

She did not question me further about it then, but asking me to excuse her for a moment, stepped over the little plot of ground where her dear ones lay, and plucked some of the dead leaves from the flowers that grew upon it. To my thinking she was just what an honest English girl should be; straight-forward and gentle, looking the whole world in the face with frank and honourable simplicity. When she had finished her labour of love, which only occupied her a few moments, she suggested that we should stroll on to her house.

"My uncle will be wondering what has become of me," she said, "and he will also be most anxious to see you."

"He does not accompany you to church then?"

"No," she answered. "He is so conscious of his affliction that he cannot bear it to be remarked. He usually stays at home and walks up and down a path in the garden, brooding, I am afraid, over his treatment by Mr. Hayle. It goes to my heart to see him."

"And Mr. Codd?"

"He, poor little man, spends most of his time reading such works on Archæology as he can obtain. It is his one great study, and I am thankful he has such a hobby to distract his mind from his own trouble."

"Their coming to England must have made a great change in your life," I remarked.

"It has made a difference," she answered. "But one should not lead one's life exactly to please one's self. They were in sore distress, and I am thankful that they came to me, and that I had the power to help them."

This set me thinking. She spoke gravely, and I knew that she meant what she said. But underlying it there was a suggestion that, for some reason or another, she had not been altogether favourably impressed by her visitors. Whether I was right in my suppositions I could not tell then, but I knew that I should in all probability be permitted a better opportunity of judging later on. We crossed the little bridge, and passed along the high road for upwards of a mile, until we found ourselves standing at the entrance to one of the prettiest little country residences it has even been my lot to find. A drive, some thirty yards or so in length, led up to the house and was shaded by overhanging trees. The house itself was of two stories and was covered by creepers. The garden was scrupulously neat, and I fancied that I could detect its mistress's hand in it. Shady walks led from it in various directions, and at the end of one of these I could discern a tall, restless figure, pacing up and down.

"There is my uncle," said the girl, referring to the figure I have just described. "That is his sole occupation. He likes it because it is the only part of the garden in which he can move about without a guide. How empty and hard his life must seem to him, now, Mr. Fairfax?"

"It must indeed," I replied. "To my thinking blindness is one of the worst ills that can happen to a man. It must be particularly hard to one who has led such a vigorous life as your uncle has done."

I could almost have declared that she shuddered at my words. Did she know more about her uncle and his past life than she liked to think about? I remembered one or two expressions he had let fall in his excitement when he had been talking to me, and how I had commented upon them as being strange words to come from the lips of a missionary. I had often wondered whether the story he had told me about their life in China, and Hayle's connection with it, had been a true one. The tenaciousness with which a Chinaman clings to the religion of his forefathers is proverbial, and I could not remember having ever heard that a Mandarin, or an official of high rank, had been converted to the Christian Faith. Even if he had, it struck me as being highly improbable that he would have been the possessor of such princely treasure, and even supposing that to be true, that he would, at his death, leave it to such a man as Kitwater. No, I fancied if we could only get at the truth of the story, we should find that it was a good deal more picturesque, not to use a harsher term, than we imagined. For a moment I had almost been tempted to believe that the stones were Hayle's property, and that these two men were conducting their crusade with the intention of robbing him of them. Yet, on maturer reflection, this did not fit in. There was the fact that they had certainly been mutilated as they described, and also their hatred of Hayle to be weighed in one balance, while Hayle's manifest fear of them could be set in the other.

"If I am not mistaken that is your step, Mr. Fairfax," said the blind man, stopping suddenly in his walk, and turning his sightless face in my direction. "It's wonderful how the loss of one's sight sharpens one's ears. I suppose you met Margaret on the road."

"I met Miss Kitwater in the churchyard," I replied.

"A very good meeting-place," he chuckled sardonically. "It's where most of us meet each other sooner or later. Upon my word, I think the dead are luckier than the living. In any case they are more fortunate than poor devils like Codd and myself. But I am keeping you standing, won't you sit down somewhere and tell me your news? I have been almost counting the minutes for your arrival. I know you would not be here to-day unless you had something important to communicate to me. You have found Hayle?"

He asked the question with feverish eagerness, as if he hoped within a few hours to be clutching at the other's throat. I could see that his niece noticed it too, and that she recoiled a little from him in consequence. I thereupon set to work and told them of all that had happened since I had last seen them, described my lucky meeting with Hayle at Charing Cross, my chase after him across London, the trick he had played me at Foxwell's Hotel, and my consequent fruitless journey to Southampton.

"And he managed to escape you after all," said Kitwater. "That man would outwit the Master of all Liars Himself. He is out of England by this time, and we shall lose him."

"He has not escaped me," I replied quietly. "I know where he is, and I have got a man on his track."

"Then where is he?" asked Kitwater. "If you know where he is, you ought to be with him yourself instead of down here. You are paid to conduct the case. How do you know that your man may not bungle it, and that we may not lose him again?"

His tone was so rude and his manner so aggressive, that his niece was about to protest. I made a sign to her, however, not to do so.

"I don't think you need be afraid, Mr. Kitwater," I said more soothingly than I felt. "My man is a very clever and reliable fellow, and you may be sure that, having once set eyes on Mr. Hayle, he will not lose sight of him again. I shall leave for Paris to-morrow morning, and shall immediately let you know the result of my search. Will that suit you?"

"It will suit me when I get hold of Hayle," he replied. "Until then I shall know