The Victorian Mystery Megapack (34 page)

He forgot his depression and ill-temper in the prospect, and spoke with more animation.

“No, I should hope not, Tom,” said Peter. “What with his Fads about the Bible being a Rock, and Monarchy being the right thing, he is a most dangerous man to lead the Radicals. He never lays his ax to the root of anything—except oak trees.”

“Mr. Cantycot!” It was Mrs. Crowl’s voice that broke in upon the tirade. “There’s a gentleman to see you.” The astonishment Mrs. Crowl put into the “gentleman” was delightful. It was almost as good as a week’s rent to her to give vent to her feelings. The controversial couple had moved away from the window when Tom entered, and had not noticed the immediate advent of another visitor who had spent his time profitably in listening to Mrs. Crowl before asking to see the presumable object of his visit.

“Ask him up if it’s a friend of yours, Cantercot,” said Peter. It was Wimp. Denzil was rather dubious as to the friendship, but he preferred to take Wimp diluted. “Mortlake’s upstairs,” he said. “Will you come up and see him?”

Wimp had intended a duologue, but he made no objection, so he, too, stumbled through the nine brats to Mrs. Crowl’s bedroom. It was a queer quartette. Wimp had hardly expected to find anybody at the house on Boxing Day, but he did not care to waste a day. Was not Grodman, too, on the track? How lucky it was that Denzil had made the first overtures, so that he could approach him without exciting suspicion.

Mortlake scowled when he saw the detective. He objected to the police—on principle. But Crowl had no idea who the visitor was, even when told his name. He was rather pleased to meet one of Denzil’s high-class friends, and welcomed him warmly. Probably he was some famous editor, which would account for his name stirring vague recollections. He summoned the eldest brat and sent him for beer (people would have their Fads), and not without trepidation called down to “Mother” for glasses. “Mother” observed at night (in the same apartment) that the beer money might have paid the week’s school fees for half the family.

“We were just talking of poor Mr. Constant’s portrait, Mr. Wimp,” said the unconscious Crowl; “they’re going to unveil it, Mortlake tells me, on the twenty-first of next month at the Bow Break o’ Day Club.”

“Ah,” said Wimp, elated at being spared the trouble of maneuvering the conversation; “mysterious affair that, Mr. Crowl.”

“No; it’s the right thing,” said Peter. “There ought to be some memorial of the man in the district where he worked and where he died, poor chap.” The cobbler brushed away a tear.

“Yes, it’s only right,” echoed Mortlake a whit eagerly. “He was a noble fellow, a true philanthropist. The only thoroughly unselfish worker I’ve ever met.”

“He was that,” said Peter; “and it’s a rare pattern is unselfishness. Poor fellow, poor fellow. He preached the Useful, too. I’ve never met his like. Ah, I wish there was a Heaven for him to go to!” He blew his nose violently with a red pocket-handkerchief.

“Well, he’s there, if there
is
,” said Tom.

“I hope he is,” added Wimp fervently; “but I shouldn’t like to go there the way he did.”

“You were the last person to see him, Tom, weren’t you?” said Denzil.

“Oh, no,” answered Tom quickly. “You remember he went out after me; at least, so Mrs. Drabdump said at the inquest.”

“That last conversation he had with you, Tom,” said Denzil. “He didn’t say anything to you that would lead you to suppose—”

“No, of course not!” interrupted Mortlake impatiently.

“Do you really think he was murdered, Tom?” said Denzil.

“Mr. Wimp’s opinion on that point is more valuable than mine,” replied Tom, testily. “It may have been suicide. Men often get sick of life—especially if they are bored,” he added meaningly.

“Ah, but you were the last person known to be with him,” said Denzil.

Crowl laughed. “Had you there, Tom.”

But they did not have Tom there much longer, for he departed, looking even worse-tempered than when he came. Wimp went soon after, and Crowl and Denzil were left to their interminable argumentation concerning the Useful and the Beautiful.

Wimp went west. He had several strings (or cords) to his bow, and he ultimately found himself at Kensal Green Cemetery. Being there, he went down the avenues of the dead to a grave to note down the exact date of a death. It was a day on which the dead seemed enviable. The dull, sodden sky, the dripping, leafless trees, the wet spongy soil, the reeking grass—everything combined to make one long to be in a warm, comfortable grave, away from the leaden ennui of life. Suddenly the detective’s keen eye caught sight of a figure that made his heart throb with sudden excitement. It was that of a woman in a gray shawl and a brown bonnet standing before a railed-in grave. She had no umbrella. The rain plashed mournfully upon her, but left no trace on her soaking garments. Wimp crept up behind her, but she paid no heed to him. Her eyes were lowered to the grave, which seemed to be drawing them toward it by some strange morbid fascination. His eyes followed hers. The simple headstone bore the name: “Arthur Constant.”

Wimp tapped her suddenly on the shoulder.

Mrs. Drabdump went deadly white. She turned round, staring at Wimp without any recognition.

“You remember me, surely,” he said. “I’ve been down once or twice to your place about that poor gentleman’s papers.” His eye indicated the grave.

“Lor! I remember you now,” said Mrs. Drabdump.

“Won’t you come under my umbrella? You must be drenched to the skin.”

“It don’t matter, sir. I can’t take no hurt. I’ve had the rheumatics this twenty year.”

Mrs. Drabdump shrank from accepting Wimp’s attentions, not so much perhaps because he was a man as because he was a gentleman. Mrs. Drabdump liked to see the fine folks keep their place, and not contaminate their skirts by contact with the lower castes. “It’s set wet, it’ll rain right into the new year,” she announced. “And they say a bad beginnin’ makes a worse endin’.” Mrs. Drabdump was one of those persons who give you the idea that they just missed being born barometers.

“But what are you doing in this miserable spot, so far from home?” queried the detective.

“It’s Bank Holiday,” Mrs. Drabdump reminded him in tones of acute surprise. “I always make a hexcursion on Bank Holiday.”

CHAPTER VIII

The New Year brought Mrs. Drabdump a new lodger. He was an old gentleman with a long gray beard. He rented the rooms of the late Mr. Constant, and lived a very retired life. Haunted rooms—or rooms that ought to be haunted if the ghosts of those murdered in them had any self-respect—are supposed to fetch a lower rent in the market. The whole Irish problem might be solved if the spirits of “Mr. Balfour’s victims” would only depreciate the value of property to a point consistent with the support of an agricultural population. But Mrs. Drabdump’s new lodger paid so much for his rooms that he laid himself open to a suspicion of special interest in ghosts. Perhaps he was a member of the Psychical Society. The neighborhood imagined him another mad philanthropist, but as he did not appear to be doing any good to anybody it relented and conceded his sanity. Mortlake, who occasionally stumbled across him in the passage, did not trouble himself to think about him at all. He was too full of other troubles and cares. Though he worked harder than ever, the spirit seemed to have gone out of him. Sometimes he forgot himself in a fine rapture of eloquence—lashing himself up into a divine resentment of injustice or a passion of sympathy with the sufferings of his brethren—but mostly he plodded on in dull, mechanical fashion. He still made brief provincial tours, starring a day here and a day there, and everywhere his admirers remarked how jaded and overworked he looked. There was talk of starting a subscription to give him a holiday on the Continent—a luxury obviously unobtainable on the few pounds allowed him per week. The new lodger would doubtless have been pleased to subscribe, for he seemed quite to like occupying Mortlake’s chamber the nights he was absent, though he was thoughtful enough not to disturb the hardworked landlady in the adjoining room by unseemly noise. Wimp was always a quiet man.

Meantime the 21st of the month approached, and the East End was in excitement. Mr. Gladstone had consented to be present at the ceremony of unveiling the portrait of Arthur Constant, presented by an unknown donor to the Bow Break o’ Day Club, and it was to be a great function. The whole affair was outside the lines of party politics, so that even Conservatives and Socialists considered themselves justified in pestering the committee for tickets. To say nothing of ladies. As the committee desired to be present themselves, nine-tenths of the applications for admission had to be refused, as is usual on these occasions. The committee agreed among themselves to exclude the fair sex altogether as the only way of disposing of their womankind who were making speeches as long as Mr. Gladstone’s. Each committeeman told his sisters, female cousins and aunts that the other committeemen had insisted on divesting the function of all grace; and what could a man dowhen he was in a minority of one?

Crowl, who was not a member of the Break o’ Day Club, was particularly anxious to hear the great orator whom he despised; fortunately Mortlake remembered the cobbler’s anxiety to hear himself, and on the eve of the ceremony sent him a ticket. Crowl was in the first flush of possession when Denzil Cantercot returned, after a sudden and unannounced absence of three days. His clothes were muddy and tattered, his cocked hat was deformed, his cavalier beard was matted, and his eyes were bloodshot. The cobbler nearly dropped the ticket at the sight of him. “Hullo, Cantercot!” he gasped. “Why, where have you been all these days?”

“Terribly busy!” said Denzil. “Here, give me a glass of water. I’m dry as the Sahara.”

Crowl ran inside and got the water, trying hard not to inform Mrs. Crowl of their lodger’s return. “Mother” had expressed herself freely on the subject of the poet during his absence, and not in terms which would have commended themselves to the poet’s fastidious literary sense. Indeed, she did not hesitate to call him a sponger and a low swindler, who had run away to avoid paying the piper. Her fool of a husband might be quite sure he would never set eyes on the scoundrel again. However, Mrs. Crowl was wrong. Here was Denzil back again. And yet Mr. Crowl felt no sense of victory. He had no desire to crow over his partner and to utter that “See! didn’t I tell you so?” which is a greater consolation than religion in most of the misfortunes of life. Unfortunately, to get the water, Crowl had to go to the kitchen; and as he was usually such a temperate man, this desire for drink in the middle of the day attracted the attention of the lady in possession. Crowl had to explain the situation. Mrs. Crowl ran into the shop to improve it. Mr. Crowl followed in dismay, leaving a trail of spilled water in his wake.

“You good-for-nothing, disreputable scarecrow, where have—”

“Hush, mother. Let him drink. Mr. Cantercot is thirsty.”

“Does he care if my children are hungry?”

Denzil tossed the water greedily down his throat almost at a gulp, as if it were brandy.

“Madam,” he said, smacking his lips, “I do care. I care intensely. Few things in life would grieve me more deeply than to hear that a child, a dear little child—the Beautiful in a nutshell—had suffered hunger. You wrong me.” His voice was tremulous with the sense of injury. Tears stood in his eyes.

“Wrong you? I’ve no wish to wrong you,” said Mrs. Crowl. “I should like to hang you.”

“Don’t talk of such ugly things,” said Denzil, touching his throat nervously.

“Well, what have you been doin’ all this time?”

“Why, what should I be doing?”

“How should I know what became of you? I thought it was another murder.”

“What!” Denzil’s glass dashed to fragments on the floor. “What do you mean?”

But Mrs. Crowl was glaring too viciously at Mr. Crowl to reply. He understood the message as if it were printed. It ran: “You have broken one of my best glasses. You have annihilated threepence, or a week’s school fees for half the family.” Peter wished she would turn the lightning upon Denzil, a conductor down whom it would run innocuously. He stooped down and picked up the pieces as carefully as if they were cuttings from the Koh-i-noor. Thus the lightning passed harmlessly over his head and flew toward Cantercot.

“What do I mean?” Mrs. Crowl echoed, as if there had been no interval. “I mean that it would be a good thing if you had been murdered.”

“What unbeautiful ideas you have, to be sure!” murmured Denzil.

“Yes; but they’d be useful,” said Mrs. Crowl, who had not lived with Peter all these years for nothing. “And if you haven’t been murdered what have you been doing?”

“My dear, my dear,” put in Crowl, deprecatingly, looking up from his quadrupedal position like a sad dog, “you are not Cantercot’s keeper.”

“Oh, ain’t I?” flashed his spouse. “Who else keeps him I should like to know?”

Peter went on picking up the pieces of the Koh-i-noor.

“I have no secrets from Mrs. Crowl” Denzil explained courteously. “I have been working day and night bringing out a new paper. Haven’t had a wink of sleep for three nights.”

Peter looked up at his bloodshot eyes with respectful interest.

“The capitalist met me in the street—an old friend of mine—I was overjoyed at the
rencontre
and told him the idea I’d been brooding over for months and he promised to stand all the racket.”