The Victorian Villains Megapack (22 page)

STATEMENT BY THE FOREIGN UNDER-SECRETARY.

EXTRAORDINARY STORY. IS IT A HOAX?

When the House of Commons assembled today at noon there was an unusual attendance of members, and hardly a seat on the floor of the chamber was vacant, except on the Treasury Bench, whose sole tenant was the Foreign Under-Secretary. Immediately after prayers Mr. Grammaty rose and said:

“Sir, I have to crave the indulgence of the House for the purpose of making a statement on behalf of the Government in view of the very serious news published in the morning papers. The Government has never had any intention of breaking off diplomatic relations with France, and Lord Strathclyde, while doing so in all good faith, appears to have acted on misleading and unauthorized instructions. I can assure the House that the matter will form the subject of the most searching investigation, and in the meantime Lord Strathclyde has been requested to offer the amplest apologies to the French Government. I am happy to inform the House that the relations of this country with France have never been more friendly than they are at the present moment.”

This statement was received with profound silence, only broken by the cheers which arose on all sides at the conclusion. Immediately Mr. Grammaty resumed his seat the House rapidly emptied, and the lobby was thronged with members eagerly discussing the situation.

We understand that Lord Tranmere was in attendance at the Foreign Office at an unprecedented hour, and that a brisk exchange of telegrams between London and the Paris Embassy has been in progress all morning.

It is stated that our relations with France have within the last few days assumed a most amicable complexion, and no one was more surprised at the morning’s news than the officials at the Foreign Office. Although the utmost reticence is being observed by the Department in question, we are in a position to state that the despatch in accordance with which Lord Strathclyde acted was nothing less than a clever forgery, which was mysteriously substituted for a genuine one of quite a different complexion. How or by what means the exchange was effected, and how the spurious document was allowed to reach the Paris Embassy undetected, appears to be an unsolved mystery pending the result of the investigation promised by the Government.

Pringle folded the paper and glanced at the scene around him. The individual so hotly denounced was not likely to stand in the pillory—the Chrysanthemum Club’s cellar had insured that!

He walked on past the entrance to the Exchange. The murmur of the crowd which filled every approach was answered by a roar from the Temple of Mammon, deeper and more thunderous than any that had hitherto escaped the swing-doors, now wedged wide open by the surging mass.

The pendulum had swung back. The bulls were triumphantly rushing prices up again.

Romney Pringle in THE CHICAGO HEIRESS

It was a warm morning towards the end of June, and London, that is to say the West End, was fast becoming an arid wilderness. But although almost everybody who was anybody had long left town, there was one place which enjoyed a popularity unaffected by the flight of fashion or the seasons.

The weirdly zoological collection which frequents the reading-room of the British Museum was very much in evidence. The juvenile and cheerful lady who edited the magazine, the elderly and unhappy one who copied hymns, the retired tragedian in the cloak who spent the day in sleep, were all there. So, too, was the red-whiskered gentleman of uncertain age, who seldom rested, but perambulated the room in search of the book which some one had always taken from the lower shelves just when he wanted to consult it. He was still on patrol-duty; his shuffles across the hills and valleys of the linoleum being almost the only sounds which broke the stillness of the warm, leathery atmosphere.

Perhaps it was on account of the heat, at any rate the blue dome was free from echoes of the groans, grunts, and still more fearsome noises with which the staple reader is wont to accompany his literary studies.

The reading-room was a locality which appealed to Mr. Pringle with a two-fold concern. As a (supposititious) literary agent he was bound to be interested in the focal point of modern hack-writing; but it was rather as a student of human nature that he frequented the chamber which has succeeded to the heritage of Grub Street.

The room, then, was very full, and Pringle had made the circular tour twice over before he espied a seat which another reader was in the act of vacating. It was at the end of one of the long desks, and taking a volume of Froude’s
England
from the nearest shelf he sat down, Next to him was a man whom he at first took to be asleep, but a closer inspection showed that he was merely leaning back regarding the dome with an abstracted air. His uncropped hair and beard, together with a large pair of spectacles, gave him the look of a student, which was heightened by the sombrero-looking wide-awake which reposed on the shelf in front of him. He was evidently in search of inspiration from the vault above, as several sheets of notepaper on the desk appeared to be copies of a half-written letter which he was unable to finish. Littered all about were books of ponderous size, many resplendent with gilding, Peerages and directories, from the reference library, mingled in confusion with more recondite works from the inmost recesses of the establishment. Burke jostled Debrett, and was in turn overlaid by Dod, while Burke’s
County Families
and sundry genealogies and court-guides were smothered by Zeimssen’s many-volumed
Medicine
. Here and there about the heap were scattered stained and dirty clippings of newspaper, carefully backed with postage-stamp edging at the well-worn creases.

The creator of all this chaos was by no means a fluent writer, for Pringle had curiously watched him for perhaps half-an-hour before he completed the letter to his satisfaction. He then made a fair copy, and folded it into an envelope, which he addressed with elaborate care. Rising, he chanced with his elbow to push one of the medical tomes, which fell to ground with a resounding thud. As he stooped to pick it up, Pringle leant across and read the address on the laborious composition:

“The Most Noble the Marquis of Lundy,

65 Clarges Street, Mayfair, W.”

Sorting out his volumes, the unknown took some of them up to the central desk to redeem the vouchers, and Pringle made use of the opportunity to exchange blotting-pads. As it happened, the two were stained in a not very dissimilar manner, and he had just time to complete the manoeuvre before his neighbour returned. Pringle’s intuition was remarkably prophetic, for tearing his tickets in half and flinging them under the desk, the letter-writer deliberately proceeded to remove the top sheet of the blotter with a paper-knife! The mere possibility of the substitution did not appear to even enter his mind, and carefully placing the sheet, together with his other papers, in a leathern pocketbook, he walked out of the room.

As soon as he was gone, Pringle groped under the desk for the torn fragments of the tickets. The signature on one of them was intact, and he read in long-looped characters the name “Julius Schillinghammer.”

Schillinghammer—he was a German, then, reflected Pringle. No wonder he found English composition such a labour. He looked too respectable for a begging letter-writer; besides, it was evident he regarded the letter as an important one, or why had he been so careful to remove the blotting-paper? But Pringle had lived long enough to be surprised at nothing, and congratulating himself on his opportune exchange of the blotters, he hastily appropriated the incriminating top-sheet and followed the German out. When Pringle reached the cloak-room, the way was blocked by an irascible old gentleman who had lost the tally for a small black bag, and was expressing grave doubts as to the logic of the attendant’s refusal to return him his property. “Words” were passing freely, and Pringle lost several minutes in the endeavour to recover his own walking-stick. At length he got off, but, as he expected, there was no sign of the stranger in the entrance-hall. As he ran down the steps, however, he caught a glimpse of him passing out of the front-gate, and hurried across the gravel-path in time to see the German turn into Museum Street.

Crossing Oxford Street, Mr. Schillinghammer kept straight on through Drury Lane and Wych Street, then, skirting St. Clement Danes, he turned into Essex Street, and suddenly disappeared about half-way down. Pringle, who had followed all the time at an unobtrusive pace, fixed the spot by its vicinity to a street-lamp, and after what he judged a discreet interval, walked past. The house into which Mr. Schillinghammer had disappeared proved to be one of the smaller ones in the street, and, like the majority, was let in offices—or, to be exact, an office; for there was but a single brass-plate upon the door, and it bore the inscription—

Essex Private Inquiry Agency.

British and Continental.

Pringle strolled on down the slope of Essex Street towards the flight of steps leading to the Embankment. But he never reached that thoroughfare, for, pausing a moment at the top of the flight to take a perspective view of the ‘Inquiry Agency’, he saw a figure abruptly emerge from the office and walk with quick step towards the Strand. Without a moment’s hesitation Pringle turned back and started in pursuit, for although garbed in the frock-coat and tall hat of advanced civilization, there was no mistaking the identity of Mr. Julius Schillinghammer!

At the top of the street the German paused, and appeared to be in search of a conveyance, as he carefully scrutinized the procession of omnibuses. A vacant garden-seat at length invited him to one bound westward, and Pringle, who had feigned absorption in the literary contents of a shop-window which accurately reflected the other’s movements, ran after it, and took an inside seat as far as possible from the door. Towards Piccadilly his watchfulness increased, and as they drew near the Green Park it was rewarded by seeing Mr. Schillinghammer dismount and walk up Clarges Street. He was evidently in a hurry, and by the time Pringle, who had followed, but on the other side of the street, was abreast of No. 65, the German was engaged in conversation with a man-servant, to whom he was handing a letter. Pringle walked on, and, turning the corner into Bolton Row, looked back at the house; but the door was already closed, and as he ventured a step back into Clarges Street, he was just able to see Mr. Schillinghammer amble round the corner into Piccadilly.

Returning to Furnival’s Inn, Pringle commenced the work of deciphering the hieroglyphics on the blotting-paper.

Mr. Schillinghammer appeared to have used a ‘J’ pen—a course which had its disadvantages as well as its advantages. For if the individual words were bold and distinct, the thickness of the pen had only served the more thoroughly to run one word into another on the blotting-paper. After some thought, Pringle decided to hunt first for any semblance to the signature on the book-ticket, and, with the aid of a looking-glass to reverse the script, he was at length rewarded by the sight of a blurred
lius Schilling
in one corner. This was satisfactory in so far as it offered proof that the writer had signed the letter with his own name. But when Pringle endeavoured, amid the confused mass of blots and smudges, to decipher some additional words, or even letters, the task appeared well-nigh hopeless. But he was not the man to be daunted by obstacles, however insurmountable they might at first sight appear, and he patiently returned to the charge, using the book-ticket to verify and distinguish the German’s handwriting from that of any previous user of the pad. Fortunately the upper sheet was almost unblemished, and at the cost of a racking headache, his eyes almost blinded by the use of a magnifying-lens, he made out a series of words from the boldest part of the writing—doubtless derived from the fair copy of Mr. Schillinghammer’s literary effort.

When set out on paper this is how they appeared—

92 Lang, seeing, possession, brother, business, good, heard, you, obtained, concealed, history, repair, value, thousand, inform, require, family, notes, nothing, be, and the signature.

There were also numerous fragments of words with a fair quantity of scattered conjunctions and articles. These he copied on to a separate sheet of paper, and after a laborious study of their relative sequence on the pad, he constructed a skeleton of the letter, thus:

92 Lang — seeing — an — mis — Chic — repair — occurred — possession — y — history — be — value — y’s — family — you — doc — evi — cide — brothers — concealed — unde — inform — e — Englbusiness — y — many — thousand — require — good — obtain — notes — nothing — heard — fully — Julius Schillinghammer.

Having completed this patchwork, Pringle lit a cigarette, and, sitting down, took up a newspaper in the desperate endeavour to give his brain a short respite. It was the
Park Lane Review
that he had picked up, and although it required no great intellectual effort for its perusal, his thoughts incessantly strayed to the skeleton letter.

Just as the faintest ray of light in a dark room is enough to indicate the position of an outlet, so a single syllable was the means of solving the riddle. Determined to concentrate his attention on the paper, he re-read a paragraph which his eye had skimmed without assimilating it.

An event which I predicted some weeks ago shows that alliances with the British aristocracy are still popular with our fair American cousins. It is now formally announced that the Marquis of Lundy is to be shortly married to Miss Petasöhn, the only child of the well-known Chicago millionaire, and who aroused so much interest by her beauty and graceful presence during the late season.

Flinging the paper aside, Pringle impulsively seized the skeleton letter. There it was, sure enough!—
Chic
—a fragmentary word which had hitherto baffled him completely. It stood for Chicago, of course! And, encouraged by the discovery, he sat down again, and studied the paper with avidity.

For many years the Lundy estates have been greatly impoverished, partly by bad seasons, but mainly by the extravagance and mismanagement of former owners; Thorpe Regis, the palatial family residence in Norfolk, having been long unoccupied. The present Marquis, as a younger son, had at one time little chance of succeeding to the title, had not the death of both his brothers opened the way for him. It is a curious fact that the late peer and his two sons all ended their lives by some misadventure; the eldest son being found dead in a wood as the result of a gun-accident when shooting; while the second, who bid fair to take a high position in the House of Commons, and had a brilliant future before him, took poison by mistake. The late Lord Lundy was drowned soon afterwards, having mistaken his way on a dark night. The present peer, better known as Lord William Pownall, has always been a favourite in society, and I understand he has been simply overwhelmed with congratulations on his approaching wedding, which will be one of the social events of the year.

Could Schillinghammer be a blackmailer, after all, Pringle pondered. There was
notes
plainly written, and also the significant term
thousand.
Were not the words almost enough to explain the whole letter? The German appeared to be asking for a thousand pounds in notes. That was a large sum to demand. It must be a valuable secret to have such a price put upon it. There was a hint at a family mystery to be read between the lines of the
Park Lane Review.
The riddle was certainly a very piquant one, and Pringle returned to his task with a renewed zest.

A little further search for disconnected words in the mazes of the blotting-paper, a little re-arrangement of the disjointed syllables, a happy guess or two, and he clothed the bare bones of the skeleton thus:—

92, Langbourne Street,

Leicester Square.

My Lord,

Seeing the announcement of your betrothal to Miss Petasöhn of Chicago, which I hope will repair your fortunes, it has occurred to me that I am in possession of facts concerning your family history which may be considered of value by the lady’s family. When I tell you that I have documentary evidence of the suicide of your father and two brothers, facts which have been successfully concealed hitherto, you will understand my reasons for informing you that I wish to leave England and start a business in Germany. The sum of a thousand pounds is what I require, and should your lordship be good enough to assist me to obtain this sum in notes, I promise you nothing more shall be heard of the matter.

Yours respectfully,

Julius Schillinghammer.

This, then, or something very like it, must have been the letter which Mr. Schillinghammer had not thought fit to trust to the post, and Pringle contemplated his solution of the mystery with very pardonable pride.

Obviously the paragraphs in the
Park Lane Review
had struck the key-note of Mr. Schillinghammer’s little plot, whilst the details might have been worked up from papers which had come under his notice, most probably in the offices of the ‘Inquiry Agency’, of which he must be a member, if not the principal. As to the address, Pringle was already acquainted with it as a notorious place where letters were received, and he had little difficulty in recognizing it in the fragmentary address of the skeleton.