Part 3

Yes, it was undoubtedly the same woman. I had seen her before, and knew her to be of very equivocal character. Nay, I will go a step further, and assure my readers that she was a person of very disreputable antecedents, and had recently served a term of imprisonment in consequence of certain disclosures for which our firm was responsible.

Her penchant for frequent changes of names made it difficult to follow her career. But the last name under which I had known her was Angelina Dyer, and as Angelina Dyer she was convicted of assisting at the operations of a gang of burglars, of whom I have an exciting story to tell some day.

Knowing the true character of this woman, therefore, it caused me no small surprise to see her talking to Mr Lanimore, one of our city aldermen, whom I would have deemed one of the last individuals in the world to have dealings with Angelina Dyer.

My curiosity was aroused. I determined to see the farce to the end, and for the present relinquished my intention of taking a hansom to Liverpool-street Station, whither I was bent on a mission that could easily wait for another opportunity.

Angelina was naturally rather handsome, and on the present occasion was dressed with such remarkably good taste that the casual onlooker might easily mistake her for the lady she was evidently pretending to be.

Her face wore an expression of pleased surprise, and she held out her hand with a warmth of welcome which there was no resisting. There was a handshake, very cordial on the one side, somewhat hesitating on the other, and then I knew what was going on just as well as if I had been within earshot.

Alderman Lanimore was finding it difficult to recognise his impulsive interlocutor, and Angelina was expressing her delight at meeting such an old friend. And in London, too, of all places in the world!

There was a few moments’ smiling repudiation of bygone acquaintanceship on one side, and an apparently regretful realisation of the truth on the other, and then the little comedy ended, the lady bowing ceremoniously, and the gentleman raising his hat politely.

A second later Angelina had vanished in the never-ending crowd which makes the neighbourhood of the Mansion House one of the typical sights of London. Mrs Dyer’s abrupt departure did not trouble me. I knew where to find her if I wanted her again. And I also knew that there would be a further development of this seemingly trivial adventure, for that the lady with the angelic name had had an ulterior motive in accosting the alderman I was certain.

Nor was my conviction long in being verified. Mr Lanimore, followed by myself, walked along Cheapside, with a good-natured smile on his face, until he reached Sir William Bennet’s famous horological establishment. Then it struck him that he had better compare his timepiece with the big clock over the shop, and he mechanically put his hand to his fob to withdraw his costly gold repeater.

It was gone!

I could almost have laughed, aloud at this development of my little comedy, for though I had not been quite sure what form Angelina’s cunning would take, and although in spite of my keen watch I had not seen her take anything, I had no doubt that pocket-picking was the lady’s real game.

Nor did the alderman’s next act surprise me. He hailed an empty passing hansom and almost shouted to the driver, “Bell and White, Holborn, and drive like wildfire.”

That he would invoke our aid had also been one of my foregone conclusions, for we had already transacted business for him in connection with the large firm of which he was the senior partner.

Feeling glad that Mr Lanimore had not seen me, I waited until another hansom had appeared, and then gave the driver a somewhat similar order to the one given by the alderman a few moments before.

Arrived at our office, I found that the impatient victim of the “auld acquaintance” dodge had been waiting a few minutes for an audience with one of the principals. Mr Jones conducted a branch business now, and was seldom at the London office. Mr White had sold out and retired, and my uncle only just entered the office as I did.

“Leave this case to me,” I whispered, “I know all about it.”

With a smile and a nod of comprehension, Mr Bell betook himself to his own private sanctum, while I removed my outdoor wraps and proceeded to interview the alderman.

“Good morning, Mr Lanimore! What can we do for you this time?”

“Oh, such a fool as I have been, Miss Bell! Actually let a strange woman stop me in the street and talk to me! Pretended to know me, and I never suspected the hussy’s intentions.”

“And the result?”

“My beautiful gold repeater, given to me by our employees when I was elected sheriff, has disappeared.”

“That is very serious.”

“Serious! good heavens! It’s as much as my happiness and reputation are worth to lose that watch! I must have it back, and the affair must not get into the newspapers.”

“I suppose not. Publicity is not always desirable.”

“In this case it would be ruination. The circumstances are so exasperating. My partners are inclined to twit me about what they call my ‘starched morality!’ My rivals in the Council Chamber are on the lookout for a chance of picking a hole in my character. My wife is desperately and absurdly jealous. They would one and all refuse to believe that I did not know to whom I was speaking, and I should be branded as a hypocrite who practised social vices under the cloak of pretended morality.”

“What was the woman like?”

“Tall, of fine figure, and ladylike appearance, with bright complexion, and a quantity of bright golden hair. She also wore a pair of gold rimmed eyeglasses.”

“H’m! not much to go by. There are so many stylish-looking woman with yellow hair and bright complexions nowadays. A little ready money and a determination to be in the fashion can work wonders. Did you observe any other peculiarity about the pick-pocket?”

“No, nothing. You see, I had not time to notice much, for the interview was short and I was quite unsuspicious.”

“Well, there is very little to act upon. Still, I daresay you will find our firm of more use than the police would have been.”

“I am quite sure of it. Those other cases you undertook for me were nothing short of miraculous, and I have the utmost faith in your powers.”

“Thank you. I believe I may almost promise that you shall have your watch back within a week. Meanwhile, say nothing about the affair to anyone else. You can be supposed to have taken your repeater to be regulated.”

When Mr Lanimore left our office he was much more at ease about his property than when he came in, and I was pretty confident about my ability to fulfil my apparently rash promise.

I had taken shorthand notes of all the details Mr Lanimore was able to give me. Not that I needed them. But it looks well to be as business-like as possible.

A few minutes later I was explaining the whole affair to my uncle, and we soon had our plans for future action completed. We generally keep an eye, through our subordinates, on such likely people for business as Angelina Dyer, and knew that she was lodging in a street off Commercial-road at this moment.

We also felt sure that for this day, at least, she would suspend further active operations in the city. At present she would be displaying her prizes to the admiring gaze of her associates. Pawnshops are a worked-out field for our regular watch-lifters. They have a safer means of disposing their gains. Not far from Houndsditch there lives a man under whose clever manipulative fingers stolen watches and jewellery lose their identity. If ordinary “faking” won’t work the oracle, then the melting-pot is resorted to.

In all probability Alderman Lanimore’s repeater would be in the hands of the watch-faker within twenty-four hours. We must, therefore, secure it to-night – if not by strategy, then by force.

Four subordinates were instantly instructed to keep a careful watch upon Angelina Dyer’s abode, and to set about the business without delay. Half-an-hour later I started on the track, accompanied by Adam Henniker. We had both undergone a considerable transformation, and would not have been recognised by our best friends. We looked like very well-to-do country simpletons who had never been in London before, and who were agog with amazement at all we saw. We noticed many a smile of covert meaning on the faces of passers-by, whose knowledge of the neighbourhood we were in made them question the wisdom of our gorgeously liberal display of jewellery.

But we did not anticipate trouble, as our colleagues were mostly near enough to assist us at a moment’s notice, although until they received that notice, we were as utter strangers to each other in our occasional encounters.

I had had no time to snatch a meal before setting out to watch for Angelina again, and was feeling very hungry, but dared not relax my attention. I knew, however, that people of the class we had chosen to represent saw no breach of manners in eating in the street, and we decided that our assumption of the roles of country Johnnies would look much more natural if we comported ourselves with true country unconsciousness.

When, therefore, Angelina realised our expectations by emerging from her habitation, and walking towards Aldgate, Adam was cutting a big sandwich with a huge clasp-knife, and I was making futile efforts to dispose of a cake that had proved much less tempting than when it was displayed in the vendor’s window.

In an instant Angelina spotted prey, and Adam, with his mouth half-full of sandwich, contrived to give her an excuse for speaking to us, if she had needed one, remarking loudly, “Aw doant care, Jane, aw’m not gooin’ whoam withawt seein’ th’ place wheer th’ Whitechapel murders were done. Aw say, missis, con yo tell us which is th’ street as th’ fust murder were done in?”

“Why, yes,” was the smiling reply. “It’s just over here. I’m going that way, and I’ll show you the street.”

Five minutes later the business was accomplished. We had caught the pickpocket in flagrante delicto, and one of our men had come up in time to help us to ease her of the watch and chain she had just stolen from Adam. We gave her the alternative of going to prison for both thefts she had committed that day, or of purchasing present immunity by delivering the alderman’s gold repeater to us.

“Well, if ever I let a set of lags take me in again like that!” she remarked, in great disgust. “Here, take the blooming ticker, and thank your stars that none of my pals are about.”

When Alderman Lanimore received his property back safe and sound the next morning, he could not restrain his admiration of our astuteness, which had of course suppressed disenchanting explanations.

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “I never heard tell of anything like it. Your deductions and methods of reasoning must be more than human. Wonderful!”

VI. A Broken Trust

“I am sure, Miss Bell, that there is much more in this than meets the eye. Mrs Wemysson’s conduct is so altogether unexpected and inexplicable that it can only be accounted for on the hypothesis of some peculiar development of events of which her daughter and myself are supremely ignorant.”

“Will you kindly recapitulate all the circumstances of the case to me, Mr Wigan?”

“Certainly. You see, Miss Alice Wemysson and I have known each other since we were children, and I can hardly remember the time when I did not dream of love in a cottage with Alice. Yes, it was really to be love in a cottage at first, for a more ambitious prospect did not disclose itself to us until lately. My father has too many claims upon his purse to be able to give his sons more towards a start in life than a good education. And, until he died, no one dreamed that Mr Wemysson possessed more than a modest competence.

“The attachment between Alice and myself was so patent to all our friends that our names have been coupled together for years. But no formal engagement existed between us, and though Mr Wemysson seemed to be rather fond of me than otherwise, he always insisted that his daughter was too young to know what was best for her, and that there was still plenty of time to decide her future.

“Things were in this position when Mr Wemysson died, and then it transpired that he was a comparatively rich man, having left ten thousand pounds to his wife, and ten thousand pounds to her in trust for Alice Wemysson, who was the daughter of the testator’s first wife. The young lady was then eighteen, and she was to be under the absolute guardianship of her stepmother until she was twenty-one. If she married contrary to the wishes of her guardian, she was to forfeit her inheritance.

“The last stipulation afforded nobody any uneasiness, for everyone knew Mrs Wemysson to be well disposed towards me, and could hardly understand why such a condition should have been made. As a matter of fact, Mrs Wemysson gave her cordial consent to the engagement soon after her husband’s death, but stipulated for the postponement of the marriage until the bride was of age.

“The first summer after this unfortunate event passed tranquilly enough. As winter approached my mother-in-law-elect developed a restless disposition, which culminated in a determination to travel and see the world.

“‘My means have always been too cramped to permit me to enjoy life properly,’ she remarked. ‘There is no reason, however, why I should make myself miserable now, and I mean to get all the pleasure I can this winter. Alice shall do the Continent with me; it will do her good to see something worth seeing, before she settled down to a humdrum married life.’

“To tell the truth, both Alice and I were rather shocked at this speech. It seemed to us to cast a reflection on the good man whom we had both loved and implied a certain feeling of elation at being relieved of the duties and ties of matrimony, which ill-befitted a woman who had always been treated with affection by her husband.

“But no serious objections to the proposed trip could be offered, and the day came when I bade farewell to my dear girl, never dreaming that aught could now intervene between us and our future happiness, or that the cloud which was to overshadow our destinies was already rising.

“I received my letters regularly. Alice was delighted with all she saw, and gave me wonderful descriptions of the places she and her mother visited. For many weeks all seemed to be going gaily with the travellers. Then a change came over the spirit of Alice’s letters. They were less spontaneously confidential, and a vague sense of impending trouble seemed to pervade them. But I could get no satisfaction until the travellers returned. It was in vain that I questioned. My questions were always parried evasively, and I am not at all sure that I was surprised when my darling broke down at sight of me, and welcomed me with tears instead of smiles.

“I had been waiting a long time at the station for them, my impatience leading me there a good while before the train was due. I was able to render Mrs Wemysson some little services, but could not help seeing that my attentions were unwelcome, and when I saw how harassed and ill Alice looked, I was filled with a vague foreboding of mischief to come.

“Nor was my foreboding unfounded. During the course of that same evening Mrs Wemysson informed me that I must consider my engagement with her daughter at an end, as she had other views for her.

“‘In fact,’ she said, ‘Alice is going to marry Mr Jackson, a gentleman whom we met abroad.’ Probably my anger got the better of my good manners, for I flatly contradicted the widow at this point. I pointed out that Mr Wemysson had always liked me; that she herself had consented to our engagement, and that I knew Alice to be true as steel from top to toe.

“‘Nevertheless, she will not marry you,’ I was coolly informed. ‘She knows that her father wished her to obey my judgment in the matter, and she is too good a daughter to act counter to his wishes. Besides, if she were to marry you, after I have forbidden her to do so, she would forfeit her fortune, and it is poor love that would reduce its object to poverty.’

“Now Alice certainly loved her father very much. But she is not exactly a girl to sacrifice herself without knowing the reason why. Her character is by no means as superficial and yielding as Mrs Wemysson imagines, and she vows that if she may not marry me, she will marry nobody, least of all this Mr Jackson, who is elderly, thin, bald, waspish-looking, and of altogether forbidding exterior. His face is also so indicative of craft one instinctively distrusts him.

“Now, as I have said before, Mrs Wemysson must have some powerful motive for wishing to substitute Mr Jackson for myself as her daughter’s husband, and I want you to unravel the mystery for me.”

I had listened to Mr Wigan’s story with some interest, and now proceeded to cross-question him.

“Who, or what, is this Mr Jackson?” I asked.

“He is a solicitor, with an office near Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”

“How long has Mrs Wemysson known him?”

“I should say that on and off she has known him ten years. He was the late Mr Wemysson’s solicitor, but was never on visiting terms with the family until recently.”

“Where did he meet the Wemysson’s lately?”

“At Monte Carlo. I believe the widow was alarmingly fond of the gaming tables there, and Alice suspects that she lost a lot of money.”

“Is Mr Jackson rich?”

“On the contrary, he barely subsists on a very poor business.”

“Then what was he doing at Monte Carlo?”

He had to go over there on business for another client – to watch a scapegrace young spendthrift, I believe. While there he recognised Mrs Wemysson, and speedily became quite familiar. The widow at first professed to dislike him very much, but apparently got over her dislike, and entered no protest when he proclaimed himself madly in love with her ward.”

“Can you give me any clue to this man’s influence over the widow, Mr Wigan?”

“Not the slightest. I only know that the influence was very evident, and that although Mrs Wemysson’s temper became very trying towards Alice, she submitted very quietly to a somewhat impertinent reproof from Mr Jackson.”

“Concerning what did he reprove her?”

“He told her that she had lost quite enough at the tables, and that she had better not gamble any more.”

“What banker do the Wemysson’s patronise?”

“The National and Provincial Bank.”

“Thank you. I believe that is all I wish to ask you at present, Mr Wigan. I will look into the case, and let you know the results as soon as possible.”

When my client departed he did not look very hopeful of the results of my investigations, and although my plans were already laid, I was not at all sanguine as to their success.

But of two fundamental facts I felt certain. Mrs Wemysson had committed some indiscretion, in which the welfare of her step-daughter was involved. And Mr Jackson was not only cognisant of that indiscretion, but was determined to make capital out of it.

Now, whatever the indiscretion was, it had evidently had its origin at Monte Carlo. It was probably connected with Mrs Wemysson’s rashness at the gaming tables. But at this point the puzzle became more tangled. Even if she had been losing money heavily, this would not make marriage into her family desirable for an impoverished fortune-hunter, for that Mr Jackson had actually fallen in love with Alice Wemysson was, I concluded, hardly a likely supposition to entertain. I preferred to look upon his motives as entirely mercenary.

Suppose Miss Wemysson proved to be a greater matrimonial prize than she knew herself to be? This would explain the solicitor’s conduct in forcing his attentions upon an unwilling girl. But it made the widow’s behaviour all the more inexplicable.

With a view of satisfying myself as to Miss Wemysson’s financial position, I communicated with one of the employees of the bank in which her father had invested his money, and desired him to let me know how much of this money had been withdrawn. We make a point of having friends in all sorts of unlikely places, and their co-operation often simplifies our work wonderfully. In this case the information I got startled me considerably.

Of the twenty thousand pounds left by Mr Wemysson, there was barely five thousand left! Mrs Wemysson must have been completely carried away by the gambling demon, to risk her daughter’s little fortune as well as her own. Mr Jackson evidently knew of her breach of trust and was trading upon it. Now where did his profit come in?

I determined to know.

A few days later, having watched him leave his office, I interviewed the poor underpaid soul who served him as clerk. At first I could get little information from him. But, prompted by the promise of another situation, he showed me what a scoundrel his employer really was.

Mr Jackson knew that Mrs Wemysson had gambled her daughter’s money, and threatened to expose and ruin her if she did not insist upon Alice marrying him. He forebore to tell her that Mr Wemysson’s brother, of whom they had not heard for years, had died and left his niece a fortune of fifty thousand pounds. He, as the family solicitor, knew all about it, but was keeping the information back until he had secured the heiress for his wife.

My course was now plain. I paid a visit to Mrs Wemysson and proved to her that I knew more about her own and her daughter’s affairs than she did. She was very humble and repentant. She was also grateful when I undertook to smooth over the ruffled feelings of the injured lovers.

The latter are now happily married, and have sealed their forgiveness by augmenting Mrs Wemysson’s fortune to its original amount. They have, however, taken the precaution to place only the interest at her disposal. Every Christmas brings me some wonderful presents from Mr and Mrs Wigan, who will have it that I saved them from lifelong misery by exposing Mr Jackson’s schemes ere it was too late.

Mr Jackson himself has by this time discovered that shady ways don’t pay. He has been struck off the rolls, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields knows him no more.

VII. Madame Duchesne's Garden Party

“It cost more than two hundred pounds, Miss Bell. But that is not the worst of the matter. My aunt stipulated that I should always wear it as a perpetual reminder of her past kindness and her future good intentions, and if she misses it I shall lose favour with her altogether. To lose Miss Mainwaring’s favour means to lose the splendid fortune which is hers to bequeath, so you see how very serious the matter is for me. It is, indeed, little short of life and death, for poverty would kill me now. For God’s sake do your best for me.”

“But surely, if Miss Mainwaring knows that you could not possibly have foreseen your loss, she will not be unjust enough to disinherit you?”

“Indeed she will. She believes me to be vacillating and unreliable, because I broke off an engagement with a rich man to whom I had but given a reluctant acceptance, and united myself to the man of my choice. My husband was poor and therefore beyond the pale of forgiveness, and my own pardon is only based on the most unswerving obedience to all my aunt’s injunctions. The pendant came from India, and the stones in it are said to possess occult power – I wish they had the power to come back to their rightful owner.”

The speaker heaved a sigh of desperation as she spoke, and I glanced at her with considerable interest. She was tall, pale, dark-eyed, and handsome, but her appearance bore certain signs of that vacillation and carelessness of which her aunt accredited her with the possession.