Charles Palliser (156 page)

The evening advanced without my noticing until I found myself in absolute darkness and had to find a lucifer. Only then did I realize that Joey had not arrived as had been agreed, and in my present state of mind this was further reason for disquiet. My visiter had made me so restless that I could not think of staying idly indoors and so, putting on my great-coat and hat, I stepped out with the intention of walking to Mrs Digweed’s cottage to see what had become of Joey.

I had only gone half the length of Church-lane towards the Strand when I heard a rapid step behind me. Before I had time even to be afraid, I was flung head foremost against the wall and pinned by a powerful grip. The blow to my head stunned me and a wave of nausea rose within me. Then a face was thrust close to mine and a harsh voice came out of the darkness :

“Well, ain’t this a pleasant surprise! And there was I a-thinking as you was dead and gorn. Wasn’t I glad to hear as how it wasn’t true! I thought I’d come and see for meself.

And I
am
pleased. On’y it quite shakes a cove’s respeck for the public prints, don’t it?”

He pulled something from his belt. “I reckon I should prove ’em right, arter all. And the beauty of it is I can’t be lagged for it for you’re dead already.”

I knew there was no point in struggling nor in crying out in that lonely place. My only chance lay in an appeal to self-interest. But on what grounds? On whose behalf was Barney doing this? Surely not Daniel Porteous’ for now that old Clothier was dead my death was of no benefit to his heirs. Was he getting revenge against me on his own behalf ? In that event I was lost. But there was another possibility.

“Sancious put you up to this, didn’t he?” I cried.

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Even as I said it, I had no idea what the attorney’s motives could be. But whatever they were, they must be based on a mistaken assumption. And so I played the one card I had :

“But he doesn’t know that the will still exists! It wasn’t destroyed any more than I was!

Tell him that!”

Barney wrenched me round to face him and stared at me thoughtfully, breathing heavily and stroking the blade of his knife with his thumb.

“This is a bubble,” he said at last.

“If you kill me now Sancious won’t profit. Only the Mompessons. Do you want that?”

This was inspired, for I recalled his brother telling me that he had a grudge against them over payment for some work.

He stared at me for the longest moment of my life, then he suddenly pushed me from him and rapidly made off.

I hurried on towards the Strand and only felt safe once I was among the crowds and the street-lamps.

Why should Sancious want my death? Who could he be working for? That remained a puzzle, but suddenly I both understood how Barney had known where to find me and knew why Joey had not come that afternoon! He had sold me to his uncle. I found my eyes watering and realized that I was close to tears. I had come to have faith in him after a long period of suspicion, and just when I had in effect entrusted my life to him he had betrayed me. Something was running down my face. I realized that it was not tears but blood, for now that I was more collected I found that I had a cut on my forehead that was bleeding profusely. My head throbbed and I felt weak and dizzy. Where could I go now? I had nowhere. Only my dismal lodgings and they were now dangerous. Yet I had no choice. With a heavy heart I hastened home, sneaked up the stairs avoiding my landlady, and locked my door. I bathed my wound and stemmed the bleeding, then lay on my bed as the room spun around me.

How magnificent the house must have looked that night! I might have passed it just then for I have often walked about the West-end of Town at a late hour gazing at Old Corruption’s display of wealth and ostentation (and deploring it, of course). I can imagine how the crush of carriages arriving formed a lock in the street that quite blocked the way — another gesture of contempt for the convenience of one’s fellows.

I may lead you inside the mansion as it was that night. We pass a door-footman at the entrance and our names are announced by a hired groom of the chambers and called from one landing-place to the next as we ascend. fine sophas and elegant beaufets are disposed around the walls and Collinet’s quadrille band are already playing waltzes and gallopades, though it is only ten and unfashionably early (but we are not of the
bon
tow!) to have arrived.

Lady Mompesson and Sir David are preparing to receive their guests at the door to the great Salon at the top of the main stair. They appear so at ease that surely their guests almost doubt the rumours of their impending smash. From the lavish expenditure one would not believe these stories. Surely they are the OLD FRIENDS IN A NEW LIGHT

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usual spiteful gossip that the fashionable world is only too prey to from idleness and viciousness?

Now Sir David advances smiling and bowing towards two of the guests: a lady of about fifty and a younger lady. The latter is not very beautiful but she seems pleased to see the baronet and smiles at him in a way surely calculated to inspire the strongest emotions in the male breast.

Now here comes Sir Thomas in the company of the Countess of H .and her son, the Honourable Percy Decies. Is that a wink that Sir Thomas bestows upon Sir David as he sees him addressing Miss Sugarman?

And there is a rather burly young gentleman in regimentals. Why, it is Tom Mompesson! Yet surely he has been sacked from his regiment? However that may be, he is looking rather fine in his scarlet coat with gold froggings, his canary-yellow waistcoat, and his shiny Hessians. Who is that smartly-dressed gentleman with him? His bottle-green coat, though handsome, seems not quite to fit him. Why, it is Mr Vamplew! What is the tutor doing at the ball? Has a sudden access of the democratic instinct led his employers to invite him? Is the butler, too, a guest rather than the master of ceremonies here? No, for Mr Vamplew seems not to be enjoying himself but is watching the young gentleman very closely — and, in particular, the number of glasses of champagne he is consuming. For on one occasion he slightly shakes his head at the footman, Joseph, as he advances towards them and the servant instantly moves away.

About an hour or less before midnight, just as the ball is getting under way, a young gentleman approaches the front-door of the house. He is stopped by the door-footman who, after a brief exchange, calls for Mr Thackaberry who comes, magnificently dressed and strapped almost to the point of insensibility. After some conversation the young man is admitted. He mounts the stairs and shakes hands with Sir David at the entrance to the Salon.

“What the deuce are you doing here?” his host exclaims in an undertone.

The guest flushes and says in an urgent whisper: “I must speak to you and your mother immediately.”

“Not now, for Heaven’s sake! You’ll look like a damned bailiff!”

The young gentleman twists his mouth into a smile and says softly: “The Huffam heir is alive!”

Sir David stares at him for a moment, then points towards a door at the end of the landing: “Go into the Chinese Room. I’ll fetch my mother.”

A few minutes later Sir David and Lady Mompesson enter the darkened chamber. Sir David carries a candle-stick which provides the only light. As he places it on a side-table he says: “Mamma, you have often heard me speak of my friend, Harry.”

“How do you know the Huffam boy is alive?” Lady Mompesson demands without ceremony.

Harry flinches briefly and then says: “On the best evidence, Lady Mompesson: that of my own ears and eyes. I met and spoke with him today — yesterday, in fact.”

“But how can you be sure it was he?” Lady Mompesson objects. “Nobody 722 THE

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has positively identified him since he absconded from the madhouse to which his uncle sent him. And that was nearly four years ago.”

“By the most remarkable coincidence,” Harry replies, “I met him just a few months before he escaped and disappeared. But I did not realize that it was he. He was known to me then merely as a school-friend of my half-brother. It was only very recently that I connected him with the Huffam heir.”

“That is indeed an extraordinary coincidence,” Lady Mompesson says coldly.

I believe she meant to imply that she did not believe him.

Harry seems to take her remark in this sense for he addresses his next words to her son: “He came to me immediately after escaping from his grandfather, and that was when he told me who he was.”

“But that was last February!” Sir David exclaims. “Why did you not tell me this before, Harry? You know very well that we have been in fear of being dispossessed as soon as the Court declares him dead.”

“He swore me to secrecy because he knows his life is in danger,” Harry lies. “And then he disappeared and I had no idea where to lay hold of him again. But now I have found him. But to the main matter: the fact that he is alive after all is wonderful news for you.”

“It certainly is,” Sir David agrees. “With old Clothier dead and reports in the papers that the boy was murdered by him, and then the Maliphant claimant having come forward, things were looking deuced bad.”

“So I take it that if the boy can be persuaded to come before the Court, the situation will be as before,” Lady Mompesson says. “We will be safe as long as he remains alive.”

“It is not quite as simple as that, Lady Mompesson,” Harry says. “There is the complication of the will.”

She looks horrified and turns to her son who stammers: “You see, Mamma, I asked Harry’s advice about the trust we were going to create when we wanted Henrietta to marry Tom. After all, he’s an Equity man.”

She scrutinises her son’s friend who stares confidently back at her: “Perhaps he shouldn’t have told me, but I’m bound by confidentiality in the matter, I can assure you, Lady Mompesson.”

“Then since you know so much,” Lady Mompesson says, “you probably know that we assume that the will was destroyed, for we believe that Assinder’s accomplice —

improbable though it seems — was a knife-boy employed in this house. He was by all accounts almost an ideot. However, he must have conveyed the document out of here after Assinder’s misadventure, though he could have had no idea of its value. We assume that he subsequently lost or destroyed it.”

“You are right in thinking that the knife-boy made away with the will. But he was no ideot and I promise you that he had a very precise sense of its value. He had entered your house for the sole purpose of stealing it. In short, he was the Huffam heir.”

“This is absurd!” Sir David cries, but his mother puts her hand on his arm.

“Continue with your story,” she commands.

“He told me that he managed to become a servant in this house and spent several months here before he succeeded in making away with the will. (Assinder was not in colleague with him but was working on his own account.) When he left here he was somehow caught by his grandfather’s agents and delivered to his death though, contrary to what was reported in the newspapers, he managed to escape.”

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“And what happened to the will?” Lady Mompesson asks impatiently.

“It passed from his possession into the hands of someone whom I cannot name. In short, it still exists.”

“Who has it?” Sir David cries.

“I said I cannot name the party and that is the literal truth. I have been contacted by this person and instructed to negotiate with you for the sale of the will on his behalf.”

Sir David and his mother look at each other.

Harry watches them narrowly and says: “You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by obtaining it. Once you have it back you need not worry about the Huffam heir dying. Marry Miss Palphramond to Tom and if the boy dies without an heir, produce the will and you are safe.”

“How can we know that this extraordinary tale is the truth?” Lady Mompesson asks.

“You may have the document certified before you buy it,” Harry replies stiffly. “If it is false then you have lost nothing.”

Lady Mompesson and her son confer in whispers and then she announces : “We can offer you a thousand pounds, but not a penny more.”

“I fear that is not enough,” Harry says sadly. “Not nearly enough.”

“But we are close to a smash,” the young baronet protests. “The Court’s Receiver is collecting our rents. My credit is exhausted and I have to sign the marriage-treaty before it’s known how close to I am to going entirely to pieces, or Miss Sugarman’s friends will break it off.”

“I will beg my principal to hold back for a few days,” Harry says. “But my fear is that if you do not purchase it, he will sell it to the Maliphant heir.”

“Then the boy must be induced to put himself under the protection of the Court,”

Lady Mompesson says.

“He is too frightened,” Harry answers. “And I fear he has good reason to be.”

“What do you mean?” Lady Mompesson asks.

Harry shrugs his shoulders: “He is an obstacle to the Maliphant claimant. That is all I meant.”

The other two look at each other in dismay. Then Sir David reaches for the bell-pull and tugs it impatiently.

The guests are now collecting in groups to discuss the strange behaviour of their hosts and there are subdued whispers of “Bailiffs” and well-bred giggles hidden behind hands. Miss Sugarman is seated beside her mother in the supper-room. Sir Thomas Delamater comes up to her and engages her in conversation. She continues to frown however and at last he moves away.

Meanwhile in the street outside the house a tall figure in black steps hastily out of a hackney-cabriolet, enters the house, and quickly mounts the stairs behind a footman who leads him to the door of the Chinese Room.

Another hour passes. The guests are in confusion now. The carriages have not been ordered to take up until about four o’clock. Tom crosses to Miss Sugarman rather unsteadily, followed by Mr Vamplew who appears to be remonstrating with him. Tom pushes him away and says something to his

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