CHAPTER LII.—HOW IT WAS DONE.

Coutts was for an instant dumb with surprise and chagrin. That smart stroke of business on which he had been priding himself was completely spoiled, and all possibility of ingratiating himself with Mr Shield was at an end.

When the bill was produced by Coutts, Wrentham had become white, and his lips, dry and feverish, closed tightly. When the signatures were calmly acknowledged by Philip and Shield, he gazed at them with a bewildered expression, then grasped the back of a chair and pretended to be looking through the window at something opposite. Sergeant Dier gave a slight jerk of his body as if lifting his heel from the floor. He darted a suspicious glance at his employer and at Wrentham. Then he turned to Tuppit and gazed at him with a bland admiring smile. Shield, Beecham, Philip, and Tuppit were unmoved.

Coutts took the bill from Tuppit, and after deliberate examination replaced it in his pocket-book.

‘I am delighted to find that it is all right, and that it will be duly honoured,’ he said; but cool as he was, the acrimony of his tone contradicted the words. ‘The fact that it is so takes me out of a very awkward corner. I must say, however, Mr Shield, that you would have saved yourself and me a great deal of unnecessary trouble and waste of time if you had told me when I first came that the thing was correct.’

‘Have a lot of things on my mind. Forget sometimes,’ Shield jerked out carelessly.

‘Ah, it’s a misfortune to have a bad memory in business. I trust you will not forget to do justice to the motives which brought me to you.’

‘Oh, I’ll do your motives full justice,’ answered Shield with a grunt which would have developed into a coarse guffaw but for a strong effort of self-restraint.

Coutts felt this indignity, although he did not feel the contemptible position in which he was placed, because he still believed that he had perfectly concealed the ulterior objects he had in bringing the supposed forgery directly under Shield’s notice.

‘That is all I ask, and I may say good-morning. I hope our next meeting will be on more agreeable business.—Good-day, Phil. I thought you had got yourself into a particularly nasty mess, and was doing my best to save you from the consequences.’

‘Thank you,’ said Philip, but there was none of his usual cordiality in voice or look.

‘Well, there has been a mistake—somewhere. I suppose it must be put down to me. However, we can afford to let it drop now.’

‘Best thing you can do,’ growled Shield.

Coutts paid no attention to the remark.

‘You’ll find bad news when you get to your chambers, Phil. There was a bonfire at Ringsford last night, and the guv’nor has got hurt.’

Philip was prevented from questioning him by Mr Shield.

‘A word in your wise ear before you go, Mr Coutts Hadleigh. I promised that your motives in coming to me should have justice done them. They shall. I know what they were. You have been useful to us, and that will be taken into account.’

‘It is a satisfaction to have served you in any way,’ rejoined Coutts, unabashed, although he understood the meaning of that parting address, and knew that somehow he had overreached himself, which was even more disagreeable than being overreached by others.

He left the room with as much composure as if he had satisfactorily completed an ordinary piece of business.

Sergeant Dier gave a cheery ‘Good-day, gentlemen—come along, Mr Tuppit,’ as he went out. Tuppit had continued to edge his way round the table to where Wrentham stood, and slipped a scrap of paper into his hand. He bowed as if taking leave of an audience, and followed the detective.

A hansom was already at the door, and Coutts was about to get into it; before doing so he spoke with injudicious abruptness to his agent.

‘Arrange with your friend about his expenses, and call at the office to-morrow at eleven.’

‘Then I am to consider the job finished?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Glad of it,’ said Dier, smiling to himself as the cab wheeled away. ‘Come along, Bob, there’s something I want you to show me, and we must have a refreshment.’

As they were about to move away, a servant informed Dier that he was wanted by a gentleman inside, and he was taken back to Mr Beecham. From him he received instructions which appeared to give him much satisfaction.

‘Come along, Bob,’ he said on rejoining that personage; ‘I am put on to a decent sort of thing this time. Off with one thing, on with another—that’s the way to do it, my boy.’

He lit a cigar, and linking his arm in that of his companion, he led the way to a small tavern situated in a by-street in convenient proximity to the mews. Although the bar was crowded with coachmen and ostlers, the tap-room was at this time of day little frequented, and at present was unoccupied.

‘Ah, this is cosy,’ said Dier, seating himself with his back to the window. ‘Now we can have a rest and a chat. Won’t you smoke?’

He gave Tuppit a cigar, ordered sherry for himself, and beer ‘in the pewter’ for his companion. The little conjurer drank as if he had been parched with thirst. Then he smoked and presently began to feel comfortable. Dier, meanwhile, entertained him with various amusing professional experiences; ordered more beer, and Bob felt more comfortable. When the sergeant saw him at ease, he approached the subject in which he was interested.

‘I was forgetting that trick I wanted you to explain to me, Tuppit. When I saw it done, it fairly puzzled me, and you know I am up to a few tricks of your trade.’

‘You’d have been a first-rate hand if you had only taken to it. But what was it puzzled you?’

‘Well, the fellow who was doing it was handed a card, as it might be. He looked at it—gave it back to us, and it wasn’t the same.’

‘One of the easiest tricks in the whole art,’ said Bob with professional contempt for the amateur. ‘I thought you would have known how _that_ is done.’

‘Explain, Bob, explain. We haven’t got cards, but here is a bit of note-paper, and we’ll cut it in two, so that the parts will be exactly alike. So. Now this is the one I am to hand to you; this is the one you are to give me back in its place’ (unperceived by Tuppit, Dier deftly pricked the second piece with a pin which he held concealed between his forefinger and thumb). ‘There, go ahead; I’ll shut my eyes until you are ready.’

The conjurer took the marked paper and almost immediately gave the word ‘ready.’ Dier gave him the second paper, and Tuppit, laughing, talked about the absurd simplicity of the trick, his astonishment that his friend should not know it, refused to believe in his ignorance, and gave him back the paper. The detective held it up between him and the light: the pin-pricks were there—the papers had been changed. He whistled softly, smiled, and emitted two clouds of smoke.

‘I believe I understand it now,’ he said, nodding familiarly; ‘that’s how you changed the bills up there.’

Tuppit was silent.

‘Well, I won’t ask any questions,’ the detective went on; ‘it is a family affair and to be settled on the quiet, and if the thing is genuine, it is no business of mine how it comes to be so. But that fellow who sent for me first meant mischief, although he fancied he humbugged me with his gammon about not going the entire length.’

‘He did mean mischief,’ said Tuppit, huskily.

‘He can’t manage it though. Now, what _you_ have got to do is to let Mr Wrentham understand that if he doesn’t make a clean breast of it by to-morrow, I’m down on him, and you won’t have another chance of saving him.’

This information was given with good humour, but Tuppit was aware of the pleasant way Sergeant Dier had of conducting his business, and, having unconsciously betrayed himself, understood that further disguise was useless. So, looking uneasily at his pewter pot, he said:

‘I suppose you mean that if he gives up everything, he won’t be brought to trial.’

‘It is not for me to say that. You have had dealings with the people, and ought to know what they are likely to do. Of course, if there is no charge, there will be no trial.’

There was considerable significance in the smile and nod which accompanied the words, and it was clear to Tuppit that Sergeant Dier was now in the confidence of Mr Shield and Mr Beecham.

‘I have written on a bit of paper that I want him to meet me as soon as he can. He knows the place, and if he refuses to make things square after all the mercy that has been shown him, I will have nothing more to do with him.’

‘That’s right, Bob; and you may give him a hint that if he tries to bolt, or to play any pranks with us, he’ll be in limbo in less than no time, and if _I_ am not mistaken, it will mean fifteen years at least.’

Bob Tuppit hung his head dejectedly, muttering to himself: ‘What will become of the poor kid and the helpless little woman who thinks him such a pink of perfection.’

The detective slapped him encouragingly on the shoulder.

‘Cheer up, Bob; you’re the right sort, and I’ll help you if I can. Off with you to your meeting-place. Wrentham is no fool and will see that the game is up.... But, I say’—detaining him—‘you will tell me some day how you managed to get the right bit of paper?’

‘Yes, yes, some day—when no harm can come of it.’

The anxious and affectionate brother of the swindler got on to the top of an omnibus and smoked moodily, his reflections being to this effect: ‘I suppose it’s in our natures. I took to juggling in an honest way, and he took to juggling the other way. Ah, education was the ruin of him—Dad said it would be as soon as he saw what a beautiful hand Martin wrote. Lucky he’s in his grave; this business would have cut him up awful.’

At Camberwell Green Tuppit left the omnibus and trudged moodily up to the _Masons’ Arms_, a comfortable-looking old-fashioned inn, which had once been a favourite halting-place of travellers between London and the village of Dulwich, the town of Croydon, and other places in Surrey. It had also been a summer resort of Cockneys in the days when there were meadows and dairy-farms in the neighbourhood of the Green. Although the fields were now covered with houses forming long yellow rows with gaudy gin palaces lifting their heads on the most prominent sites, the _Masons’ Arms_ retained most of its ancient characteristics and the survivors of its ancient customers.

The stout white post with its faded swinging signboard, stood boldly out at the kerb, having at its base a long horse-trough, with a constant supply of water. The lower part of the building was cased in wood which had been painted oak colour and varnished, but the gloss had been long since rubbed off. The lower windows with their small panes of glass stretched from wall to wall, but from top to bottom they measured little more than three feet. Above was a broad balcony set in a rustic framework and railing. A huge earthen flower-pot stood at each end, while tables and benches were conveniently placed round about.

Tuppit did not enter the house; he walked up and down, disconsolately watching every approaching vehicle in expectation of seeing his brother alight from it. He had to wait long; but he was a patient little man, and the business he had in hand was too grave for him to think of quitting his post so long as there was a shred of hope that Wrentham would be wise for once and keep the appointment.

It was somewhat late in the afternoon when he came walking leisurely up from the Green as if he had no reason for haste. Tuppit led the way into the inn, nodded to the burly landlord as he passed the bar, ascended a narrow staircase and entered the room behind the balcony.

Wrentham at first affected an air of indifference, but the affectation was instantly laid aside when his brother sharply repeated the detective’s warning and told him that the forged bill was in the hands of those who would make prompt use of it if he did not repay their generosity by a frank revelation of the schemes by which he had ruined Philip Hadleigh.

They were interrupted by the entrance of a little old man who was mumbling complainingly that he must and would have his beer and his pipe before he went home. This was spoken to a modestly dressed young woman who was gently remonstrating with him. The old man shuffled across the floor to a seat. Tuppit opened the door of the balcony quickly and went out with his brother. In the dusk they could not be observed from the street. Wrentham had not quite closed the door when he followed his brother. There was more hurried conversation and argument on Tuppit’s part.

‘What is it they want me to do?’ asked Wrentham sullenly.

‘This is it,’ answered Tuppit eagerly. ‘The real bill was given to me for your child’s and wife’s sake on the appeal of Mr Philip—Coutts Hadleigh would have sent you to penal servitude. The first thing you have to do is to let Mr Philip know that your insinuations about Miss Heathcote were made for the purpose of distracting his mind from the business, so that you might be free to play your own game.’

‘Well?’

‘The next thing is, that as you have been dealing with firms whose clerks have given you invoices for double the amounts you paid them, you have to refund the money.’

Wrentham with elbows on his knees rested his brow on his hands.

‘I didn’t say anything about Madge Heathcote that wasn’t true.’

‘But you hinted a great deal that wasn’t true, and you must own up to your purpose for doing it, or as I live, I shall bear witness against you myself.’

* * * * *

The young woman and the old man quitted the _Masons’ Arms_. That same evening Pansy Culver arrived unexpectedly at Willowmere.

FALSE DAUPHINS.

Whether the boy who died in the arms of M. Lasne, and whose body was wrapped in a sheet, put into a deal coffin, and buried in the cemetery of St-Marguerite, was a poor waif of Paris, or the lad who cleaned the shoes of his jailer’s wife and should have been Louis XVII. of France, is, judicial judgments notwithstanding, a question never likely to be satisfactorily settled. Those who have taken the most pains to elucidate the mystery agree to differ in their conclusions; M. de Beauchesne being certain that the Dauphin[1] was done to death in the Temple; M. Louis Blanc as strongly inclining to the opinion that he was rescued from durance. The wish being father to the thought, many royalists believed that the Prince had escaped his enemies, and would some day claim his own; and pretenders, as a natural consequence, have never been wanting.

The first of the sham Dauphins appeared in the days of the Consulate, in the person of Jean Marie Hervagault, a tailor by trade, who contrived to make some at least among the adherents of the ancient monarchy believe in himself and his pretensions. Notable for her enthusiastic espousal of his cause was Madame de Recambour. She lodged the impostor right royally at her mansion at Vitry-la-Française, and gloried in seeing her husband do a lackey’s duties for her protégé. Balls, concerts, and fêtes followed hard upon each other in honour of ‘Mon Prince,’ until Fouché intervened, and the ambitious tailor was condemned to four years’ imprisonment; finding his way, eventually, not to the throne of his supposititious sire, but to the Hospital for Incurables at Bicêtre, to die there in 1812.

In 1817, the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ informed its readers that on the 17th of September, a young man who called himself Louis XVII. had been apprehended at Rouen. Some twenty years before, he had presented himself to a lady of La Vendée as the orphan child of a noble family of the name of Desin. She took him in; but five months later, sent him about his business for some flagrant misconduct; and never saw him again until confronted with him at Rouen. This was Mathurin Brunneau, the son of a shoemaker of Vezins, Maine-et-Loire; who, having learned all that Madame Simon knew of the lost Louis, went about the country proclaiming himself the only lawful king of France, until his profitable peregrinations were stopped by his arrest and that of four or five of his deluded friends. In the following February, Brunneau was arraigned at Rouen, and behaved in a most unprincely fashion; challenging the president of the court to fight, and calling that dignitary a beast; his many insolent exclamations and observations being ‘couched in ungrammatical language and most vulgar terms.’ He was pronounced guilty of vagabondage; of publicly assuming royal titles; of fraudulently obtaining deeds, clothes, and considerable sums of money from divers persons; and finally, of insulting the members of a public tribunal in the exercise of their functions. For these offences, Brunneau was sentenced to pay a fine of three thousand francs and three-fourths of the costs of the inquiry, and condemned besides to suffer seven years’ imprisonment—two of the seven being given him expressly for outraging the court—his person to be at the disposal of the government when the sentence had expired. ‘I am none the less what I am,’ was the only comment of the cobbler-prince. Of his accomplices, one only was punished, by being mulcted in a fourth of the costs of the trial and sent to durance for a couple of months. Brunneau served his term, and was then set at liberty, only to die soon afterwards.

While Brunneau’s trial was yet in progress, a well-dressed man, of tall stature and goodly mien, walked into the Tuileries, followed the servants who were carrying in the king’s dinner, and reached the dining-hall before his uninvited presence was discovered. He said he was Charles de Navarre, and insisted upon seeing the king. His desire was not gratified. He was handed over to the police, recognised as the mad nephew of an exchange broker, and relegated to Charenton for the remainder of his days.

Fifteen years later, one Richemont, a baron of his own creation, was found guilty of having, by a resolution concerted and decided between two or more persons unknown, formed a plan for destroying the government and fomenting civil war. For this he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment; but his real offence lay in putting himself forward as a claimant of the throne, as the legitimate representative of the elder branch of the Bourbon family. Richemont managed to get out of prison and out of France too. He soon, however, returned to his native land, and lived there unmolested long enough to see the second Empire established. In 1853, he died at the house of the Countess d’Apchier, wife of a whilom page at the court of Louis XVI. All the papers he left behind him were seized by the authorities and sealed up. Determined his claims should not be abrogated by death, the pseudo-Dauphin’s friends inscribed on his tombstone: ‘Here lies LOUIS CHARLES DE FRANCE, born at Versailles, March 27, 1785. Died at Gleizé, August 10, 1853’—an inscription erased five years afterwards, by order of M. de Persigny, only to be replaced by the equally assertive one:

1785. No one will say over my tomb: ‘Poor LOUIS, How sad was thy fate! Pray for him!’

A gentleman bearing the name of Eleazar Williams died at Hogansburg, in the United States, in August 1858, after spending the best portion of his life in converting the Indians to Wesleyanism; the fact that he was the long-lost son of Louis XVI. being apparently unknown to any but his most intimate friends, until one of them published a book to enlighten the world on the matter. From this we learn as follows: That in the year 1795, a French family of the name of De Jourdin came to live in Albany, in the state of New York; Madame giving out that she had been a lady-in-waiting to Marie-Antoinette, a statement not belied by her appearance; while Monsieur looked and acted more like a servant than the husband of Madame, and the father of Mademoiselle Louise and Monsieur Louis, as the children of the establishment were designated. That, some little while afterwards, two Frenchmen appeared at Ticonderoga with a sickly and seemingly idiotic boy, who with his belongings—two large boxes, one of which contained a gold, a silver, and a copper coronation medal of Louis XVI.—was confided to the charge of an Indian chief known as Thomas Williams, to be brought up as one of the family. That, tumbling from a high rock into St George’s Lake, made Eleazar—as he had been named—as sensible as his red-skinned brothers by adoption. That, one day a French gentleman called him _pauvre garçon_, and gave him a gold-piece. That, going to Long Meadow with one of Thomas Williams’s sons, to be educated by a Congregational minister, somebody told him he must be of a higher grade of birth than the son of an Iroquois chief. That, after he became a missionary, one Colonel de Ferriere, before leaving Oneida, with several Indians, to visit Paris, obtained Eleazar’s signature, thrice over, to a legal document; and that the said colonel returned to America a rich man, and was known to be in correspondence with the royal family of France. Each and every one of the foregoing statements may be true, and yet Eleazar Williams no true prince.

Much more to the point was Eleazar’s extraordinary story of making the acquaintance of the Prince de Joinville on board a steamer, and afterwards, at his request, calling upon him at his hotel; when the Prince laid a document in French and English on the table, which the missionary found to be a deed whereby Charles Louis, son of Louis XVI., solemnly abdicated the throne of France in favour of Louis-Philippe. If he would sign this, the Prince promised to stand godfather to his daughter, take his son to Paris to be educated, provide him with a princely establishment in France or America, at his choice, and transfer to him all the private property belonging to the supposed defunct Dauphin. Mr Williams was not to be tempted, and his tempter returned to France unsatisfied. Unfortunately, the Prince de Joinville emphatically declared the story to be a pure invention; and it remains as unsupported as Williams’s other statement, that a gentleman in Baton Rouge wrote to him in 1848 to inform him that an aged Frenchman had upon his deathbed declared that he had assisted in the escape of the Dauphin from the Temple, and carried him off to North America, where he had been adopted by the Indians, concluding with avowing that Eleazar Williams was the man.

While that worthy was labouring at his vocation in the backwoods, a Prussian Pole, named Charles William Naundorff, weary of clockmaking, was getting into trouble by calling himself Louis XVII., for which piece of presumption a Prussian tribunal sent him to prison for three years. This was in 1822. At the expiration of a year, Naundorff was set at liberty, conditionally upon taking up his residence in the town of Crossen. In 1833, however, he appeared in Paris, and applied to the Civil Tribunal of the Seine to be recognised as Louis XVII.; an application resulting in his speedy expulsion from France, and subsequent retirement to Holland, in which country he died, on the 10th of August 1845. The official certificate of his death described him as, ‘Charles Louis Bourbon, Duke of Normandy (Louis XVII.), known under the name of Charles William Naundorff, born at the château of Versailles, in France, March 27, 1785, and consequently more than sixty years old; son of his late Majesty Louis XVI., king of France, and of her Imperial and Royal Highness Marie-Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria, queen of France, who both died at Paris; husband of Jane Einert of this town.’ Those responsible for his burial inscribed on his tomb: ‘CHARLES LOUIS, Duke of Normandy, son of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette of Austria.’

Naundorff left behind him a son, Albert, born in England, and four other children; on whose behalf, his widow, Jane Einert, in 1851, brought an action before the Tribunal of the Seine; but despite the advocacy of Jules Favre, failed in prevailing upon that court to recognise their claims.

In 1863 Albert, the English-born Naundorff, was naturalised as a Dutchman by a vote of the Dutch Chamber; and in 1874 he appealed against the adverse decision of the Tribunal of the Seine, in a suit against the Count de Chambord, demanding that he, Captain Albert de Bourbon, of the Dutch army, should be declared the rightful representative of the royal Bourbon family. M. Favre again upheld his pretensions. He contended that the son of Louis XVI. had not died in the Temple. Inspired and paid by the Count de Montmorin and Josephine de Beauharnais, certain devoted royalists had drugged the Dauphin, placed him in a basket, and carried him into an upper room, leaving a lay-figure in his bed. Discovering that their prisoner had been spirited away, the government substituted a deaf-and-dumb child in his place, and employed a doctor to poison him; but the apothecary administering an antidote, and so frustrating the plan, a sickly lad was obtained from a hospital, and soon dying, was duly coffined. ‘The coffin was taken up-stairs, where the Dauphin had passed eight or ten months; the dead body was taken out and placed in a basket, and the living Louis XVII. put in the coffin. On the way to the cemetery, the Dauphin was slipped out of the coffin, and some bundles of paper slipped in.’ The hero of this series of substitutions was then confided to the care of some trusty friends, and all the European courts notified of his escape; of which Barras, Hoche, Pichegru, and several other public men were also advised.

By way of supporting this extraordinary story, M. Favre made some strange assertions; namely, that shortly after Bonaparte’s marriage with Josephine, the Dauphin’s coffin was opened in the presence of Fouché and Savary, and found to be empty; that Josephine told the secret to the Emperor of Russia in 1814, although the Count de Provence—that is to say, Louis XVIII.—tried to buy her silence with a marshal’s baton for her son Eugène; that in the secret treaty of Paris the high contracting powers stated that there was no proof of the death of Louis XVII.; and lastly, that Louis XVIII. when dying, directed M. Tronchet to examine the contents of a certain chest, which proved of such a nature that, but for the obstinacy of one member of the Council, the ministers would have proclaimed the Duke of Normandy, king of France. Of course, the Duke of Normandy was the elder Naundorff, whose life had been twice attempted, once at Prague, and once in London; and, said the advocate, ‘people do not assassinate impostors, but they do assassinate kings.’

Causes are not to be won by bare assertions and smart sayings. The court pronounced the story of the twofold substitution too fantastic to be entertained; the simultaneous residence within the Temple of the child that did die, the child that would not die, and the hidden Dauphin, too unlikely to be believed; while the evidence before it placed the death of that prince beyond all doubt. The documents produced by the appellant could have been easily forged by any one conversant with the events they sought to distort; and as for the elder Naundorff’s claims being admitted by many people, that went for nothing, since no sham Dauphin had ever wanted adherents. It is needless to say that Captain Albert de Bourbon was dissatisfied; but he held his peace until the death of the Count de Chambord, when he publicly protested against the succession of the Count de Paris, and once more proclaimed himself king of France. Two months afterwards, he died at Breda.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The eldest son of a French king was termed the Dauphin.

ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.