Part 2

Mrs Hulbert Brackett seemed to comprehend the situation thoroughly. She left the office without another word, and we have never heard of her since.

III. One of Dora's Failures

Is it usual to record one’s failures? I believe not. And yet many of them are perforce as interesting to the public as one’s most brilliant successes.

Here is a case in point.

A young lady, whom we will call Ada Calmour, had had the misfortune to displease her wealthy father to so great an extent that he vowed never to forgive her. Her crime was a common one. She loved a handsome young fellow who was impulsive, unlucky, poor, and a cousin to boot, and steadfastly declined to give him up when ordered to do so by her father, from whom, by-the-by, she inherited the self-will which roused his ire.

Just about this time Mr Calmour fell under the spell of a lady whom his daughter did not hesitate to dub an adventuress of the most pronounced type, and it became evident to his friends that he was sickening for matrimony.

The ordinary judge of humanity would have imagined that Mr Calmour’s own infatuation would have made him more tolerant of his daughter’s love affair. But, to the tell the truth, he was perversity personified, and as his appreciation of Miss Reede’s insidious advances increased, so did his depreciation of his nephew’s qualities progress in inverse ratio.

At last matters reached a crisis. The adventuress’s intrigues progressed successfully, and Miss Reede succeeded in transforming her impecunious self into the wife of a wealthy country magnate. She had evidently entered upon her new sphere of life with fixed ideas as to the fitness of things, for she had no sooner returned from her short honeymoon that she began to turn the house upside down, and coolly informed her step-daughter that she must vacate the bedroom she had always occupied, as it was to be transformed into a boudoir for the new mistress of the establishment. As there were at least two other rooms in the rambling old house that would have suited Mrs Calmour’s purpose equally well, Ada recognised in the new arrangement a deliberate intention to insult her, and suspected that the ulterior motive was to drive her from the house.

A girl of meek and yielding spirit would have submitted to the indignity without audible complaint. Miss Calmour was too high-spirited for that, and declined to yield her treasured privileges without a struggle. Her father had always petted and indulged her until these unfortunate love differences arose. He had, in her opinion, shown strong signs of mental aberration in marrying a woman of whose antecedents he knew nothing beyond the fact that she owed money in all directions before she secured him for her husband, and that her very close intimacy with a man whom she represented to be her guardian provoked invidious comments.

Ada was therefore not greatly surprised when her father declined to put a veto upon Mrs Calmour’s appropriation of her pet sanctum.

“I can’t see that there is anything worth making a fuss about,” he observed, carelessly. “If the room is wanted, you can easily find another that will be just as comfortable.”

In fact, he dismissed the matter as too trivial to worry about. The mischief lay deeper than he either knew or cared, and one encroachment followed another until the daughter of the house decided that her room was preferable to her company. The immediate result of this conviction was action on her part. She quitted the home she idolised, and it was surmised by her father and his wife that she had eloped with Pearce Churchill. Mrs Calmour did her best to encourage this supposition, and to fan the already unreasonable anger of the man whose money she coveted for herself.

Her schemes prospered to perfection. Mr Calmour swore never to look upon his daughter again, or to allow her to touch a farthing of his money.

“Her good-for-nothing husband may keep her,” he observed, callously. “She didn’t know when she was well off, and as she has chosen to make her own bed, she may lie upon it.”

But the poor girl had not married her cousin after all, although he was eager that she should become his wife, even though the fortune she once expected to inherit was probably alienated from her for ever. When Ada discovered that her lover’s income was totally inadequate for even one, she declined to add to his responsibilities, and went into the world to earn her own living.

“And you must not write to me for twelve months,” she said firmly but tearfully. “I love you dearly, Pearce; but you shall not sacrifice yourself to a penniless wife until time and absence have tested your affection. You need not fear for me. I shall get on well enough. And in twelve months I will write to you, and will gladly marry you if you still want me.”

All Pearce Churchill’s arguments in favour of an immediate marriage were in vain, and when Mr Calmour died quite suddenly, three months after his daughter’s disappearance, none knew where to find her. Probably the misguided man had been visited by compunctious qualms of conscience concerning his treatment of his own child, for his will, as read at the funeral, savoured of a half-hearted attempt to saddle Fate with the responsibility of deciding whether his wife or his daughter should inherit his wealth. Said will was fantastic to a ridiculous degree, and provoked the indignation of all the old friends of the family, who estimated Mrs Calmour at her true value, and set her down as the unscrupulous, scheming adventuress she really was.

Some even went so far as to hint that Mr Calmour, who was in the prime of life, and had always been a healthy man, would have been alive still, if he had been further removed from his wife’s influence. But hints and suspicions are more easily indulged in than open accusations, and many a tragedy remains unexposed because nobody likes to be the initiative accuser.

Thus, though many black glances were levelled at the newly made widow, she was allowed to pursue the even tenor of her way unmolested, in spite of the fact that her badly disguised rage at the gist of her husband’s will increased the distrust with which she was already regarded.

Mr Calmour had been enlightened as to the true state of affairs with regard to his daughter, at least as far as his nephew could enlighten him, and had become aware that she was struggling unaided to earn a livelihood which he could have given her without missing the money.

“I am very anxious about Ada,” Pearce had written. “I have written to the last address I had, and my letters have been returned, marked ‘Not known.’ I have now got a good appointment, and could I but find her Ada would marry me at once. She only refused me before because she was afraid of making me still poorer than I was. She is a noble girl, and has been shamefully treated. On your head be it, if she has come to grief in her fight with adversity. I wonder what my aunt, whom you used to pretend to love, would think if she could know that within two years of her death you have practically turned her only child into the streets, to make room for a professional adventuress, whom no one but you would have married?”

Pearce Churchill knew that his letter would enrage his uncle. But he also hoped that it might have a salutary effect. The will which he heard read convinced him that his hope had not been quite in vain.

Mr Calmour left all his property, subject to an annuity of one hundred per annum for his wife, to his nephew Pearce Churchill, on condition that he was married to Ada within three months of the testator’s death. Should this marriage not take place within the stipulated period, Ada and Pearce were to have one hundred per annum each, and everything else was to go to his wife absolutely, no less than five thousand a year being involved altogether.

The stake was so big, and it seemed so monstrous that this hated interloper should succeed to the estates that had been in the Calmour family over three hundred years, that every effort was made to baffle her.

We were speedily commissioned to discover Ada Calmour and put forth all our energies to the task. Indeed, we had been offered such a large sum in the event of success, that we engaged a colleague for me, in the person of a woman of thirty or thereabouts, who came to us with very good credentials. One of these we verified. The other reference had just started on a Continental tour when Mr White wrote to him, and was uncomeatable. But Mrs Deane was engaged, and proved herself so exceedingly smart that our firm soon congratulated itself on having secured her services.

Just at this time the Calmour case was engrossing the greater part of my attention. We had advertised very freely, but our advertisements met with no response, and as one week after another passed, and all our plans for discovering Miss Calmour failed, we grew very anxious about the matter.

The case was so exasperatingly disappointing, too. Several times we believed ourselves to be on the eve of discovery, and each time our expected triumph turned out to be a will-o’-the-wisp. Twice I journeyed to a distant town, feeling confident of meeting Miss Calmour. Each time she had disappeared and left no trace behind her, or at least so little that it was difficult to work upon. Three times Mrs Deane set off on a similar errand, and three times she returned with failure written on her face.

At last the fateful day of limitation came and went. Wherever she might be now, Ada’s inheritance was lost to her, and the adventuress was triumphant possessor of the coveted acres and personalty. At the end of twelve months’ probation she had given herself, Miss Calmour returned, and then we managed to understand the cause of our failure. She had been engaged as travelling companion by some people who turned out to have been in the pay of Mrs Calmour, and who, oddly enough, were the people who had been given as reference by Mrs Deane. All newspapers were tabooed by Miss Calmour’s employers, a Mr and Mrs Carlile, and she neither knew of her father’s death or of our advertisements. The Carliles were very erratic travellers, and it subsequently transpired that their hurried departures had been co-incidental with the futile journeys of myself or my lady colleague.

They had, in fact, been warned of our intended arrival, and had always managed to carry their unsuspecting companion away in time to avoid discovery.

Miss Calmour bitterly regretted having insisted upon twelve months’ probation, for although she was soon very happily married to her cousin, and although his earnings and their joint little incomes brought in a total of six hundred a year, this was very far short of what would have been theirs had they inherited under Mr Calmour’s stupid and eccentric will.

They did not doubt that Mrs Calmour learnt somehow that we were employed to trace the heiress, and had counter-schemed to prevent the discovery we were so anxious to make.

A few months after this painful failure of ours, I was in the neighbourhood of Calmour Grange, and saw the lady of the house driven past me in great style. I was naturally curious as to her personality, and am not sure that I was quite as surprised as I might have been at the discovery I made.

I knew now that success would have been will nigh impossible for me.

Mrs Calmour was no other than Mrs Deane, the clever lady detective who stayed in our employment three months, and to whom we confided all the details about the great will case.

I have another story to relate about her.

IV. Dora Turns the Tables

“There will soon be very little of my uncle Calmour’s property left, if this woman is allowed to pursue her present reckless course of extravagance,” observed Mr Churchill, discontentedly, about two years after the incidents narrated in the last story.

He had come to consult me as to the possibility of still outwitting Mrs Calmour, and of regaining possession of the family acres. He had but the haziest idea as to the plan most likely to realise his wishes, and admitted that the widow’s position seemed unassailable from an ordinary point of view; yet, in spite of our previous failure, he was imbued with such an extravagant belief in the abnormal ability of Messrs Bell and White that he had taken it into his head to see if we could not unseat the adventuress, even now.

“According to the law of England,” I observed to Mr Churchill, “Mrs Calmour is perfectly entitled to squander the property. The will has been duly proved, and unless we could show that this clever schemer’s title is base there is little chance of ousting her.”

“What are the pleas upon which we could upset her right to possession?”

“Probably a clever lawyer, if you could find such an individual, might suggest several. At present I can only think of two.”

“And they are?”

The illegality of Mr Calmour’s marriage and the existence of a will posterior to the one that has been proved.”

“Miss Bell! You give me new hope! There may really be another will in existence, or rather, there may have been. When I come to think of it, it is not likely that such a will would have been kept so long, even if it had ever been penned. To suppress a will is a serious thing, and culprits do not, I should imagine, carefully preserve the evidence of their own guilt.”

“There you are quite wrong. There are innumerable instances on record of people who have been punished for grave crimes that would never have been brought home to them but for their own incredible carelessness. A letter, an article of wearing apparel, a trivial trinket – these have often been the principal factors in elucidating criminal puzzles.”

“Then you really think Mrs Calmour has kept the real will back?”

“My dear sir! I never said any such thing. I only supposed it possible that, to secure the property, Mrs Calmour had suppressed her husband’s final testament, in which case it might safely be concluded that it would have been entirely in your or your wife’s favour, since the will that was eventually proved required a lot of very clever scheming on the successful legatee’s part.”

“Just so, and I mean to act on the supposition that you have made a correct guess at the true state of affairs. The idea that the marriage was not legal cannot be entertained for a moment. There are too many proofs to the contrary, worse luck.”

“So you think. But we are accustomed to look at a case from every point of view. An exhaustive analysis of Mrs Calmour’s past might disclose the existence of a prior right on the part of some accommodating individual, who is content to remain in the background for the sake of a liberal share of the plunder.”

But this view of the case, excited my impulsive client so much that I with difficulty restrained his prematurely triumphant exultation, and when he left our office he seemed to be firmly convinced that his wife would still become possessor of what was left of her father’s estate. As she was an only child, it had always been natural to suppose herself the heiress, and as at first one beloved piece of land and then another was sold by the present possessor she found it very hard to hear of such wanton waste of fine property. Probably she would share her husband’s newly-awakened hopes and enthusiasm when he told her of his interview with me.

And were these hopes quite as unfounded as they appear at the first blush?

Probably not.

I had been so much chagrined at the manner in which I had been outwitted by Mrs Calmour, that I had resolved to ferret well into her past life, and rake thence such items of interest as would help to turn the tables on her, and return to Mrs Churchill the property which I deemed morally hers.

I had already made good progress in my researches before I was consulted again by my client. But it would not have been wise, from a professional point of view, to betray the full extent of my knowledge at once. Clients have sometimes a rather a nasty knack of imagining that the remuneration due to a private detective is commensurate with the amount of research required after a case has been actually taken in hand on their behalf. They forget that all the knowledge and experience which is anterior to their application for their assistance has been the result of determined labour and forethought, without which no detective could hope to succeed, and which deserve ultimate interest equally with the client’s own provision for the future, whether it be in the shape of invested funds or acquired mental knowledge.

Of course, a great proportion of our clients are of a more reasonable nature. But the exceptions have taught us caution, and we rarely fall into a confidential mood until we are quite sure that our professional prestige will not suffer by doing so.

Thus it happened that I forebore to tell Mr Churchill how hopeful I really considered his wife’s cause to be. But I knew enough already to have made Mrs Calmour quake in her shoes, could she have guessed that I was on her trail. For instance, I knew that a certain Mr Selby formerly posed as the guardian of the lady, who, by-the-by, was at least thirty-six years of age, though she only owned to being twenty-seven. On making certain inquiries, I learned something else about Mr Selby, and came to the conclusion that his doings were quite as shady as those of his “ward.”

He made it a practice to hunt up charming country cottages or handsomely furnished suites of rooms and to offer such liberal terms for them as tempted their owners to take a lodger in for once, in order to earn an extra honest penny. Then Mr Selby, who had sung the praises of his accomplice sky-high, would superintend the installation of that individual with much empressement. The lady, whom he always represented as rich, and whom he endowed with fictitious relationship to people of note, who would have repudiated all connection with her, would bring her maid and her bosom female crony, a certain Miss Losteel, and they and the reputed guardian would eat and drink the poor hosts into ruination.

This would last until the latter began to look askance at the idea of always receiving excuses instead of money, and then the gang would suddenly seek fresh victims. Oddly enough, the victimised hosts generally found that some of their treasured knick-knacks always disappeared at the same time as their swindling lady lodger, who, while the spell of her fascination lasted, borrowed money for stamps, stationery, railway fares, and any other thing for which money is absolutely needed.

The woman was short, squat, dark, and of curious, square set features. While under the aegis of the charm which she could use at will, people found all sorts of excuses for her constant lapses into vulgarity, and smiled at the egregious vanity she displayed. Once fully alive to the unscrupulous creature’s real nature, they wondered how such an ugly incarnation of selfishness could ever have fascinated them, and were inclined to attribute her power to sorcery, or hypnotism, or to anything but the deep-laid plots of mere cunning.

After Miss Reede’s marriage to Mr Calmour, the whilom guardian (he posed as “uncle” at Dieppe) lived in bachelor chambers in London in great style, and did not even trouble to go to the office in which he had formerly done occasional business of a shady sort. He had money enough to live upon, and I had no difficulty in surmising whence it came.

Soon after Mrs Calmour succeeded to the estates Mr Selby developed into a property buyer. He figured at several of the purchases of land sold by the widow. As the latter showed no signs of being better off for all the cash she got, I inferred that it found its way back into Mr Selby’s possession, and that the latest scheme was intended to divert the ownership of the property to the nominal purchaser, instead of the widow.

I argued that there must be a reason for this, and the painstaking researches I made resulted in the astounding discovery that the couple were really man and wife. They had found it pay better to profess a different relationship. The marriage with Mr Calmour was, therefore, null and void. But I was not quite sure that this fact would suffice to restore her fortune to Mrs Churchill.

Prolonged observation convinced me that the utmost harmony existed between the two conspirators.

I felt sure that fear of discovery was prompting the transfer of the property, and argued that as friendly relations existed between the two principals, there must be a third party of whose revelations they were afraid.

It did not require much ingenuity to supply the missing link in the chain of evidence I was weaving round the lady who had outwitted me so cleverly when posing as my colleague. Suppose I turned my attention to the Mr and Mrs Carlile, whose active co-operation ensured the success of the widow’s schemes?

I thought the plan a very good one, and followed it up with such success that I learnt enough of the past life of the Carliles to have sent them both to penal servitude.

My colleagues had given me their active co-operation, and when I had arrived at a quite triumphant point of my personal investigations, I knew exactly where to put my hands on the people I wanted. But I did not care to present myself unsupported in the lion’s den, so was accompanied both by my uncle and by Mr Henniker when I paid the unsuspecting swindlers a visit.

Within half an hour we convinced them that we had them in our power, and that the only way to escape imprisonment themselves was to confess everything they knew relating to Mr Calmour’s inheritrix and her accomplice. And a pretty confession it was too!

It seems that the misguided squire had made two wills, both in legal form, and both drafted without the assistance of a lawyer. Of the one the reader has heard particulars, and though it did not carry out Mrs Calmour’s own views, she preferred to risk her chances on it rather than on the one made by the legatee in the heat of passion, a few hours before he died.

This last will left everything to Ada Calmour, absolutely and unconditionally, and was the outcome of Mr Calmour’s discovery that he had been duped and fooled. He was altogether so excited at this revelation that he was visited by a stroke, and died without being able to impart his knowledge to anyone who would have helped to see justice done to his daughter.

Mrs Carlile was a visitor in the house at the time. She obtained possession of Mr Calmour’s last will, and declined to give it up when asked to do so by the supposed widow, as she was quite aware of the power its possession gave her. The Carliles had lived quite luxuriously at Mrs Calmour’s expense, but had found it necessary to threaten exposure lately, as they had become suspicious of her intention to realise all she could, and levant with her lawful husband.

The reader can guess the rest. Mr and Mrs Churchill are installed in their own again. Even the land nominally sold to the man calling himself Selby is restored to them, as the transfer was a palpably fraudulent transaction between him and his wife, who had no legal power to sell.

The Carliles have deemed it wise to emigrate. I wish I could add that the Selbys had been duly punished for their misdeeds. But Mrs Churchill did not care to expose her poor father’s weakness too widely, and has let them go scot free.

For anything I know to the contrary, they have reverted to their former farcical pretence of being a guardian of his rich genius of a ward. Certain it is, that wherever they are, they are swindling somebody, and I would earnestly warn my readers against trusting the unsupported testimony of a plausible, gentlemanly fellow who wants to engage costly board and lodgings for his lady friend, whom he endows with the additional recommendation of being about to outstrip her pretended talented relations in the race for fame.

V. Acquaintance Dodge