Chapter 7

"My mind was instantly filled with suspicion. I rushed upstairs to make sure that she was not in the house. As I did so I happened to glance out of one of the upper windows, and saw the maid with whom I had just been speaking running across the field in the direction of the cottage. Then, of course, I saw exactly what it all meant. My wife had gone over there and had asked the servant to call her if I should return. Tingling with anger, I rushed down and hurried across, determined to end the matter once and for ever. I saw my wife and the maid hurrying back together along the lane, but I did not stop to speak with them. In the cottage lay the secret which was casting a shadow over my life. I vowed that, come what might, it should be a secret no longer. I did not even knock when I reached it, but turned the handle and rushed into the passage.

"It was all still and quiet upon the ground-floor. In the kitchen a kettle was singing on the fire, and a large black cat lay coiled up in a basket, but there was no sign of the woman whom I had seen before. I ran into the other room, but it was equally deserted. Then I rushed up the stairs, but only to find two other rooms empty and deserted at the top. There was no one at all in the whole house. The furniture and pictures were of the most common and vulgar description save in the one chamber at the window of which I had seen the strange face. That was comfortable and elegant, and all my suspicions rose into a fierce, bitter blaze when I saw that on the mantelpiece stood a full-length photograph of my wife, which had been taken at my request only three months ago.

"I stayed long enough to make certain that the house was absolutely empty. Then I left it, feeling a weight at my heart such as I had never had before. My wife came out into the hall as I entered my house, but I was too hurt and angry to speak with her, and pushing past her I made my way into my study. She followed me, however, before I could close the door.

"'I am sorry that I broke my promise, Jack,' said she, 'but if you knew all the circumstances I am sure that you would forgive me.'

"'Tell me everything, then,' said I.

"'I cannot, Jack, I cannot!' she cried.

"'Until you tell me who it is that has been living in that cottage, and who it is to whom you have given that photograph, there can never be any confidence between us,' said I, and breaking away from her I left the house. That was yesterday, Mr. Holmes, and I have not seen her since, nor do I know anything more about this strange business. It is the first shadow that has come between us, and it has so shaken me that I do not know what I should do for the best. Suddenly this morning it occurred to me that you were the man to advise me, so I have hurried to you now, and I place myself unreservedly in your hands. If there is any point which I have not made clear, pray question me about it. But above all tell me quickly what I have to do, for this misery is more than I can bear."

Holmes and I had listened with the utmost interest to this extraordinary statement, which had been delivered in the jerky, broken fashion of a man who is under the influence of extreme emotion. My companion sat silent now for some time, with his chin upon his hand, lost in thought.

"Tell me," said he at last, "could you swear that this was a man's face which you saw at the window?"

"Each time that I saw it I was some distance away from it, so that it is impossible for me to say."

"You appear, however, to have been disagreeably impressed by it."

"It seemed to be of an unnatural colour and to have a strange rigidity about the features. When I approached, it vanished with a jerk."

"How long is it since your wife asked you for a hundred pounds?"

"Nearly two months."

"Have you ever seen a photograph of her first husband?"

"No, there was a great fire at Atlanta very shortly after his death, and all her papers were destroyed."

"And yet she had a certificate of death. You say that you saw it?"

"Yes, she got a duplicate after the fire."

"Did you ever meet anyone who knew her in America?"

"No."

"Did she ever talk of revisiting the place?"

"No."

"Or get letters from it?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Thank you. I should like to think over the matter a little now. If the cottage is permanently deserted we may have some difficulty; if on the other hand, as I fancy is more likely, the inmates were warned of your coming, and left before you entered yesterday, then they may be back now, and we should clear it all up easily. Let me advise you, then, to return to Norbury and to examine the windows of the cottage again. If you have reason to believe that it is inhabited do not force your way in, but send a wire to my friend and me. We shall be with you within an hour of receiving it, and we shall then very soon get to the bottom of the business."

"And if it is still empty?"

"In that case I shall come out to-morrow and talk it over with you. Good-bye, and above all do not fret until you know that you really have a cause for it."

"I am afraid that this is a bad business, Watson," said my companion, as he returned after accompanying Mr. Grant Munro to the door. "What did you make of it?"

"It had an ugly sound," I answered.

"Yes. There's blackmail in it, or I am much mistaken."

"And who is the blackmailer?"

"Well, it must be this creature who lives in the only comfortable room in the place, and has her photograph above his fireplace. Upon my word, Watson, there is something very attractive about that livid face at the window, and I would not have missed the case for worlds."

"You have a theory?"

"Yes, a provisional one. But I shall be surprised if it does not turn out to be correct. This woman's first husband is in that cottage."

"Why do you think so?"

"How else can we explain her frenzied anxiety that her second one should not enter it? The facts, as I read them, are something like this: This woman was married in America. Her husband developed some hateful qualities, or, shall we say, that he contracted some loathsome disease, and became a leper or an imbecile. She fled from him at last, returned to England, changed her name, and started her life, as she thought, afresh. She had been married three years, and believed that her position was quite secure--having shown her husband the death certificate of some man, whose name she had assumed--when suddenly her whereabouts was discovered by her first husband, or, we may suppose, by some unscrupulous woman, who had attached herself to the invalid. They write to the wife and threaten to come and expose her. She asks for a hundred pounds and endeavours to buy them off. They come in spite of it, and when the husband mentions casually to the wife that there are new-comers in the cottage, she knows in some way that they are her pursuers. She waits until her husband is asleep, and then she rushes down to endeavour to persuade them to leave her in peace. Having no success, she goes again next morning, and her husband meets her, as he has told us, as she came out. She promises him then not to go there again, but two days afterwards, the hope of getting rid of those dreadful neighbours is too strong for her, and she makes another attempt, taking down with her the photograph which had probably been demanded from her. In the midst of this interview the maid rushes in to say that the master has come home, on which the wife, knowing that he would come straight down to the cottage, hurries the inmates out at the back door, into that grove of fir trees probably which was mentioned as standing near. In this way he finds the place deserted. I shall be very much surprised, however, if it is still so when he reconnoitres it this evening. What do you think of my theory?"

"It is all surmise."

"But at least it covers all the facts. When new facts come to our knowledge, which cannot be covered by it, it will be time enough to reconsider it. At present we can do nothing until we have a fresh message from our friend at Norbury."

But we had not very long to wait. It came just as we had finished our tea. "The cottage is still tenanted," it said. "Have seen the face again at the window. I'll meet the seven o'clock train, and take no steps until you arrive."

He was waiting on the platform when we stepped out, and we could see in the light of the station lamps that he was very pale, and quivering with agitation.

"They are still there, Mr. Holmes," said he, laying his hand upon my friend's sleeve. "I saw lights in the cottage as I came down. We shall settle it now, once and for all."

"What is your plan, then?" asked Holmes, as we walked down the dark, tree-lined road.

"I am going to force my way in, and see for myself who is in the house. I wish you both to be there as witnesses."

"You are quite determined to do this, in spite of your wife's warning that it was better that you should not solve the mystery?"

"Yes, I am determined."

"Well, I think that you are in the right. Any truth is better than indefinite doubt. We had better go up at once. Of course, legally we are putting ourselves hopelessly in the wrong, but I think that it is worth it."

It was a very dark night and a thin rain began to fall as we turned from the high road into a narrow lane, deeply rutted, with hedges on either side. Mr. Grant Munro pushed impatiently forward, however, and we stumbled after him as best we could.

"There are the lights of my house," he murmured, pointing to a glimmer among the trees, "and here is the cottage which I am going to enter."

We turned a corner in the lane as he spoke, and there was the building close beside us. A yellow bar falling across the black foreground showed that the door was not quite closed, and one window in the upper story was brightly illuminated. As we looked we saw a dark blurr moving across the blind.

"There is that creature," cried Grant Munro; "you can see for yourselves that someone is there. Now follow me, and we shall soon know all."

We approached the door, but suddenly a woman appeared out of the shadow and stood in the golden track of the lamp light. I could not see her face in the darkness, but her arms were thrown out in an attitude of entreaty.

"For God's sake, don't, Jack!" she cried. "I had a presentiment that you would come this evening. Think better of it, dear! Trust me again, and you will never have cause to regret it."

"I have trusted you too long, Effie!" he cried, sternly. "Leave go of me! I must pass you. My friends and I are going to settle this matter once and for ever." He pushed her to one side and we followed closely after him. As he threw the door open, an elderly woman ran out in front of him and tried to bar his passage, but he thrust her back, and an instant afterwards we were all upon the stairs. Grant Munro rushed into the lighted room at the top, and we entered it at his heels.

It was a cosy, well-furnished apartment, with two candles burning upon the table and two upon the mantelpiece. In the corner, stooping over a desk, there sat what appeared to be a little girl. Her face was turned away as we entered, but we could see that she was dressed in a red frock, and that she had long white gloves on. As she whisked round to us I gave a cry of surprise and horror. The face which she turned towards us was of the strangest livid tint, and the features were absolutely devoid of any expression. An instant later the mystery was explained. Holmes, with a laugh, passed his hand behind the child's ear, a mask peeled off from her countenance, and there was a little coal-black negress with all her white teeth flashing in amusement at our amazed faces. I burst out laughing out of sympathy with her merriment, but Grant Munro stood staring, with his hand clutching at his throat.

"My God!" he cried, "what can be the meaning of this?"

"I will tell you the meaning of it," cried the lady, sweeping into the room with a proud, set face. "You have forced me against my own judgment to tell you, and now we must both make the best of it. My husband died at Atlanta. My child survived."

"Your child!"

She drew a large silver locket from her bosom. "You have never seen this open."

"I understood that it did not open."

She touched a spring, and the front hinged back. There was a portrait within of a man, strikingly handsome and intelligent, but bearing unmistakable signs upon his features of his African descent.

"That is John Hebron, of Atlanta," said the lady, "and a nobler man never walked the earth. I cut myself off from my race in order to wed him; but never once while he lived did I for one instant regret it. It was our misfortune that our only child took after his people rather than mine. It is often so in such matches, and little Lucy is darker far than ever her father was. But, dark or fair, she is my own dear little girlie, and her mother's pet." The little creature ran across at the words and nestled up against the lady's dress.

"When I left her in America," she continued, "it was only because her health was weak, and the change might have done her harm. She was given to the care of a faithful Scotchwoman who had once been our servant. Never for an instant did I dream of disowning her as my child. But when chance threw you in my way, Jack, and I learned to love you, I feared to tell you about my child. God forgive me, I feared that I should lose you, and I had not the courage to tell you. I had to choose between you, and in my weakness I turned away from my own little girl. For three years I have kept her existence a secret from you, but I heard from the nurse, and I knew that all was well with her. At last, however, there came an overwhelming desire to see the child once more. I struggled against it, but in vain. Though I knew the danger I determined to have the child over, if it were but for a few weeks. I sent a hundred pounds to the nurse, and I gave her instructions about this cottage, so that she might come as a neighbour without my appearing to be in any way connected with her. I pushed my precautions so far as to order her to keep the child in the house during the daytime, and to cover up her little face and hands, so that even those who might see her at the window should not gossip about there being a black child in the neighbourhood. If I had been less cautious I might have been more wise, but I was half crazy with fear lest you should learn the truth.

"It was you who told me first that the cottage was occupied. I should have waited for the morning, but I could not sleep for excitement, and so at last I slipped out, knowing how difficult it is to awaken you. But you saw me go, and that was the beginning of my troubles. Next day you had my secret at your mercy, but you nobly refrained from pursuing your advantage. Three days later, however, the nurse and child only just escaped from the back door as you rushed in at the front one. And now to-night you at last know all, and I ask you what is to become of us, my child and me?" She clasped her hands and waited for an answer.

It was a long two minutes before Grant Munro broke the silence, and when his answer came it was one of which I love to think. He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife and turned towards the door.

"We can talk it over more comfortably at home," said he. "I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being."

Holmes and I followed them down to the lane, and my friend plucked at my sleeve as we came out. "I think," said he, "that we shall be of more use in London than in Norbury."

Not another word did he say of the case until late that night when he was turning away, with his lighted candle, for his bedroom.

"Watson," said he, "if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you."

_Illustrated Interviews._

No. XX.--DR. BARNARDO, F.R.C.S. Ed.

When it is remembered that the Homes founded and governed by Dr. Barnardo comprise fifty distinct institutions; that since the foundation of the first Home, twenty-eight years ago, in Stepney, over 22,000 boys and girls have been rescued from positions of almost indescribable danger; that to-day five thousand orphans and destitute children, constituting the largest family in the world, are being cared for, trained, and put on a different footing to that of shoeless and stockingless, it will be at once understood that a definite and particular direction must be chosen in which to allow one's thoughts and investigations to travel. I immediately select the babies--the little ones of five years old and under; and it is possible that ere the last words of this paper are written, the Doctor may have disappeared from these pages, and we may find ourselves in fancy romping and playing with the babes in the green fields--one day last summer.

There is no misjudging the character of Dr. Barnardo--there is no misinterpreting his motives. Somewhat below the medium height, strong and stoutly built, with an expression at times a little severe, but with benevolent-looking eyes, which immediately scatter the lines of severity: he at once impresses you as a man of immovable disposition and intentions not to be cast aside. He sets his heart on having a thing done. It _is_ done. He conceives some new departure of rescue work. There is no rest for him until it is accomplished. His rapidity of speech tells of continual activity of mind. He is essentially a business man--he needs must be. He takes a waif in hand, and makes a man or woman of it in a very few years. Why should the child's unparentlike parent now come forward and claim it once more for a life of misery and probable crime? Dr. Barnardo thinks long before he would snap the parental ties between mother and child; but if neglect, cruelty, or degradation towards her offspring have been the chief evidences of her relationship, nothing in the wide world would stop him from taking the little one up and holding it fast.

I sat down to chat over the very wide subject of child rescue in Dr. Barnardo's cosy room at Stepney Causeway. It was a bitter cold night outside, the streets were frozen, the snow falling. In an hour's time we were to start for the slums--to see baby life in the vicinity of Flower and Dean Street, Brick Lane, and Wentworth Street--all typical localities where the fourpenny lodging-house still refuses to be crushed by model dwellings. Over the comforting fire we talked about a not altogether uneventful past.

Dr. Barnardo was born in 1845, in Dublin. Although an Irishman by birth, he is not so by blood. He is really of Spanish descent, as his name suggests.

"I can never recollect the time," he said, "when the face and the voice of a child has not had power to draw me aside from everything else. Naturally, I have always had a passionate love for children. Their helplessness, their innocence, and, in the case of waif children, their misery, constitute, I feel, an irresistible appeal to every humane heart.

"I remember an incident which occurred to me at a very early age, and which made a great impression upon me.

"One day, when coming home from school, I saw standing on the margin of the pavement a woman in miserable attire, with a wretched-looking baby in her arms. I was then only a schoolboy of eleven years old, but the sight made me very unhappy. I remember looking furtively every way to see if I was observed, and then emptying my pockets--truly they had not much in them--into the woman's hands. But sauntering on, I could not forget the face of the baby--it fascinated me; so I had to go back, and in a low voice suggested to the woman that if she would follow me home I would try to get her something more.

"Fortunately, I was able to let her into the hall without attracting much attention, and then went down to the cook on my errand. I forget what was done, except that I know a good meal was given to the 'mother' and some milk to the baby. Just then an elder sister of mine came into the hall, and was attracted as I had been to the infant; but observing the woman she suddenly called out: 'Why, you are the woman I have spoken to twice before, and this is a different baby; this is the third you have had!'

"And so it came to pass that I had my first experience of a beggar's shifts. The child was not hers; she had borrowed it, or hired it, and it was, as my sister said, the third in succession she had had within a couple of months. So I was somewhat humiliated as 'mother' and infant were quietly, but quickly, passed out through the hall door into the street, and I learned my first lesson that the best way to help the poor is not necessarily to give money to the first beggar you meet in the street, although it is well to always keep a tender heart for the sufferings of children."

"Hire babies! Borrow babies!" I interrupted.

"Yes," replied the Doctor, "and buy them, too. I know of several lodging-houses where I could hire a baby from fourpence to a shilling a day. The prettier the child is the better; should it happen to be a cripple, or possessing particularly thin arms and face, it is always worth a shilling. Little girls always demand a higher price than boys. I knew of one woman--her supposed husband sells chickweed and groundsel--who has carried a baby exactly the same size for the last nine or ten years! I myself have, in days gone by, bought children in order to rescue them. Happily, such a step is now not needful, owing to changes in the law, which enable us to get possession of such children by better methods. For one girl I paid 10s. 6d., whilst my very first purchase cost me 7s. 6d. It was for a little boy and girl baby--brother and sister. The latter was tied up in a bundle. The woman--whom I found sitting on a door-step--offered to sell the boy for a trifle, half-a-crown, but not the mite of a girl, as she was 'her living.' However, I rescued them both, for the sum I have mentioned. In another case I got a poor little creature of two years of age--I can see her now, with arms no thicker than my finger--from her drunken 'guardian' for a shilling. When it came to washing the waif--what clothes it had on consisted of nothing but knots and strings; they had not been untied for weeks, perhaps months, and had to be cut off with a pair of scissors--we found something tied round its waist, to which the child constantly stretched out its wasted fingers and endeavoured to raise to its lips. On examination it proved to be an old fish-bone wrapped in a piece of cotton, which must have been at least a month old. Yet you must remember that these 'purchases' are quite exceptional cases, as my children have, for the most part, been obtained by legitimate means."