Part 8

It was a relief to find that my Old Man of the Sea, as I had now come to regard the fascinating captain, had been unseated so easily, and I went to bed feeling decidedly pleased with myself, and quite convinced that I had heard the last of him. This fond delusion, however, was shattered the very next day by the arrival of a crop of his bills, including those of the day before, all brought by men with instructions to ask for payment. I was for indignantly repudiating all liabilities, but Hicks deferentially suggested that this might create a bad impression; and on reflection I saw that a blunt refusal might bring some of my own creditors about my ears rather sooner than I had bargained for. I therefore told Hicks to say the accounts would be settled next day, and meanwhile sent him to the hotel at which Captain Wyngate was staying before he joined me, with a chillingly polite note requesting him to settle with his tradespeople. Hicks came back with the cheerful information that the captain had gone away and left no address. Not knowing what else to do, I paid. The amount was not large--some fifty pounds, in fact--but signing the cheques was a very bitter pill.

Being now left to my own resources, it occurred to me to look into my finances, and I discovered to my amazement that I had run through more than four thousand pounds in two months! There were also accounts owing, and it dawned upon me that at my present rate of living I should be without a penny long before my twenty-first birthday arrived.

"Bah!" I said to myself. "I can always borrow again if I run short." And I tried to dismiss the matter from my mind. I suppose, though, there must have been a thin strain of caution, probably inherited from a Scotch grandfather, underneath my foolishness, for I could not shake off a feeling that I was drifting on to the rocks. I went to see Violet Alexander, with a vague hope of getting sympathy, but was told she had gone out. I called again and again, with the same result. Could it be that she did not want to see me?

In this position, ashamed to make it up with my father, and not having a single friend to whom I cared to turn, I did what I ought to have done long ago. I went to Lincoln's Inn Fields to lay my case before the family solicitors.

* * * * *

"Mr. Benedict is away, sir, but his son, Mr. Charles, will see you," was the reply to the announcement of my name, and I was ushered into the presence of Mr. Charles Benedict. He did not correspond at all to my idea of a family solicitor. He was faultlessly dressed, and did not look much older than myself, but it did not take me long to discover that his knowledge of town was as extensive and peculiar as Mr. Weller's.

"Ah! Captain Wyngate," he repeated, when I mentioned the name of my evil genius. "Tall, fine-looking man, with a grey moustache, isn't he?"

"Yes," I replied, in surprise. "Do you know him?"

"I should say that he was pretty well known," rejoined Mr. Charles Benedict, with a smile. "But perhaps you had better go on with your story."

Encouraged by his interest in my troubles, I went ahead and gave him the main lines of the narrative, though I could not yet bring myself to disclose all the details of my weakness. When I had answered his last question he drew a long breath and said:--

"Well, Mr. Addington, I congratulate you!"

"What about?" I asked. "It seems to me I am in a pretty bad mess."

"So you are," he replied, cheerfully. "But I was congratulating you on coming to us before it was too late. You have had a narrow escape. Did you never suspect what kind of man Captain Wyngate is?"

"Not until those bills came in," I replied.

"The bills," remarked Mr. Benedict, "are a mere trifle. Captain Wyngate is one of the most dangerous men in London. The police have had their eye upon him for years, but he is so clever that they have never been able to catch him in the act. He lives on inexperienced young men with money."

"Like me, I suppose?"

"Yes, but you are not the first by a very long way. Your case is quite in his best style. He has goodness knows how many accomplices, quite a syndicate of sharks, and they have all sorts of shady people in their pay. I have no doubt whatever that he knew all about your money affairs and had a look at you at Cambridge without your knowledge; also that he knew of your coming to London and had you tracked to the bar where he made your acquaintance by upsetting your glass. Jackson is in the syndicate, and you may be sure our friend the captain would have had a good slice out of the three thousand pounds they reckoned to make out of you; but I think we can stop their little game."

Needless to say, these disclosures staggered me considerably.

"Then Captain Wyngate is nothing but a swindler?" I asked.

"One of the worst type," answered the solicitor. "I don't think he would stick at murder if it was worth while and could be done safely. He was mixed up in the death of Charlie Byfleet, a rich young fellow who went to Switzerland with him and was killed by falling down a precipice. Many people suspected that Wyngate got possession of Byfleet's money and papers and then pushed him over the cliff."

"That explains the nightmare!" I exclaimed, and I told my adviser of the scene in Wyngate's bedroom.

"Yes; no doubt he has to do it over again in his sleep now and then," said Mr. Benedict, "but that's all the punishment he has had. He swore it was an accident, and there was no evidence against him. He has been keeping quiet since that affair, but he must have thought it had blown over by this time as he has begun again on you. I suppose he kept you to himself as long as he could?"

"He never took me to see anybody except Violet Alexander, the actress," I said.

"Oh, indeed!" ejaculated Mr. Benedict, smiling. "This is interesting. Did you find her very agreeable?"

"Charming," I replied, ingenuously.

"Wasn't she a rather expensive acquaintance?"

I was obliged to confess that she was, and mentioned the presents.

"Of course, as you were so friendly with Wyngate, you had to be nice to his wife," observed the solicitor.

"_What?_" I exclaimed, in astonishment.

"She is a very useful helpmate for him," continued the lawyer, smiling compassionately at me. "They have hunted together for years and made lots of money. Have you never heard of Violet Alexander's solid silver bath? You may be quite sure the lace dress and the diamond star have gone back to the shops where Wyngate made you buy them, and that he and Violet pocketed a nice little commission on the transaction. The shopkeepers are just as much in the gang as Wyngate and Jackson are. Wyngate stayed with you until he saw you were getting restive; then he ran up a few bills for you to pay and cleared out. You will not see him again until Jackson's bill falls due."

"And then?" I asked.

"Then there will be ructions," said Mr. Benedict, cheerfully.

Here he took up a paper-knife, played with it carelessly, and looked as if he expected me to find a way out of the tangle.

"Great Scot!" I exclaimed. "Shall I have to pay these villains eight thousand pounds?"

"You certainly would if you had not come to us in time," was the reply.

"Then I am in time?" I asked, much relieved.

"Yes," said Mr. Benedict; "we can save your money, if you hand it over to someone else."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Simply this. You must execute a deed placing your property, from the moment you become entitled to it, in the hands of trustees, who will pay you, let us say, three or four hundred a year out of the income. You will be unable to touch the capital. When Mr. Jackson presents his little bill, you refer him to your trustees, who will repay him his five thousand pounds with strict legal interest. Come back next week, and we will have the papers ready for you to sign. In the meantime I recommend you to change your quarters or leave London altogether."

I left Mr. Benedict with a new respect for the legal profession. After having been so thoroughly fooled and exploited, it was pleasant to think that I should have the laugh on my side in the long run. I was not at all inclined to keep out of the way, however. To miss the _dénouement_ was not to be thought of; but I decided to retire to less expensive rooms, settle my outstanding debts, dispense with Hicks ("I suppose he makes commissions out of me, like the rest of them," I said to myself, savagely), and await the crisis.

The rest of the summer and the early part of the autumn I spent very agreeably in the country, returning to London a few days before my twenty-first birthday, which fell on November 15th. I took care to write Jackson a polite letter, informing him of my change of address, and received an equally polite acknowledgment, to my great delight. In due course came another letter, reminding me that it would give Mr. Jackson pleasure to receive the sum of eight thousand pounds at my earliest convenience. This letter I handed over to Mr. Benedict, who, in the best legal language, replied that he and his father, as my sole trustees, repudiated the transactions I had entered into, but would nevertheless repay the five thousand pounds, with six months' interest at four per cent.

I would have given a good deal to see the faces of Jackson and Co. when they received this missive. By what I could gather from my lawyers, the money-lender was very indignant at first, but when he found he could make no impression on the Benedicts he concluded to treat the matter as one of those little disappointments to which business men are liable; and, finally, he accepted the offer and the money. I had expected him to show more fight, and was rather disappointed at first; but I had not long to wait for excitement.

* * * * *

Late one afternoon I was on my way home to dress for dinner, after spending an hour or two at one of my usual resorts near the Strand. Having plenty of time, I turned into the Green Park and was sauntering along, enjoying a cigarette, when a hand was laid on my shoulder from behind, and a well-known voice exclaimed: "A word with you, my friend!"

It was Captain Wyngate!

I wheeled round and looked at him defiantly.

"I have nothing to say to you," I said, curtly.

"But I have a great deal to say to you," he retorted. "I have been on the look-out for you for some time, and now that there is no one to listen to us I would like to give you a small piece of advice."

"I don't want it," I interrupted.

"Perhaps not," he continued; "but if you don't take it you will be very sorry one of these days. Are you going to pay Jackson his three thousand pounds or are you not?"

His manner was brusque and overbearing to the last degree, and my temper began to rise.

"What has that to do with you?" I demanded.

"That's my affair," he snapped. "Make your trustees pay up, or----"

"Or what?"

"You'll see, and pretty soon, too."

"Look here, Captain Wyngate," I exclaimed, hotly, "I am not going to be bullied. You and your friends have had all you will get out of me. I know you to be one of the biggest scoundrels in London, and if you interfere with me, look out for yourself, that's all."

"Indeed!" he sneered. "So you think you can trick me and get off scot-free, do you? Listen! If that money isn't paid in a week I'll have your life!"

"Don't talk rubbish," I interposed.

"Ah, you think yourself safe," he went on, in the same ironical tone. "You imagine the police will protect you, I suppose. You young idiot, your life won't be worth sixpence!"

"Touch me if you dare!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, you're quite safe now," he sneered. "I give you a week to think it over, and then, if the money isn't paid, look out. You have had fair warning."

"More than the man in Switzerland had," I suggested sarcastically, as Wyngate turned away.

He gave me one look of concentrated hate, and seemed about to speak, but checked himself, turned his back on me, and disappeared in the darkness.

"Bluff!" I said to myself. "What can he do?" And I continued my walk home.

I was quite as strong as Wyngate, and felt well able to hold my own if he attacked me. As to the idea of being murdered in the heart of London, it was preposterous. This kind of thing might happen among secret society men and weird foreigners handy with their knives; but Englishmen had nothing to fear, I assured myself, and several fellows to whom I mentioned the matter casually at the club agreed with me. I did not even think it worth while to tell Mr. Benedict of the meeting.

One night I was walking home through a fog which, though not possessing the regulation pea-soup consistency, was thick enough to make it impossible to see anyone more than twenty yards away. As I entered St. James's Square I heard footsteps behind me, but having no thought of danger I paid no attention to them. Suddenly I felt a violent blow on the shoulder, and turning sharply round I saw a man with an uplifted bludgeon, in the act of striking at me again. I was absolutely defenceless, having not even a cane with me. The thought, "Wyngate's at the bottom of this!" flashed across my mind. I had just time to jump aside and avoid the stick as it fell. Then I dashed off at full speed into the fog. I was at too great a disadvantage to be heroic.

My assailant made no attempt to follow me. His coup having failed, he no doubt thought it prudent to clear out at once. I could not distinguish his features, but one thing was certain: he was not Wyngate. He was a rather short, thick-set man, wearing a soft hat pulled well down over his eyes. The only other detail that struck me during the instant we were at close quarters was the strong smell of drink which he gave out. I put him down as a hired ruffian, and it became evident to me that if Wyngate were capable of using such instruments of revenge I should have to take him a good deal more seriously than hitherto.

As long as there was the bruise on my shoulder to remind me of the adventure in St. James's Square I was almost prudent. I took to carrying a sword-cane, and went home at night in cabs instead of walking. I also gave myself a certain amount of entertainment by manœuvering to find out whether I was being followed. To this end I used to stop suddenly and pretend to look into shop-windows, in the hope of catching the spy unawares; but, if he existed at all, he was cleverer than I at the game. Nothing happened except a collision now and then, caused by some innocent promenader running into me from behind when I pulled up. Then I had to apologize and try not to look foolish. Finally my natural insouciance got the upper hand, and I ceased to worry about my enemy.

* * * * *

Christmas was drawing near, and I was preparing to leave town to spend the festive season with friends in the country, when I received a wire one morning from Archie Hunter, my Cambridge chum, telling me he was coming to town in the afternoon, and asking me to meet him at six o'clock in the bar of a small West-end hotel where we had foregathered on previous occasions. I was on hand at the appointed time, but there was no sign of Hunter.

"Train late, I suppose," I thought, and sat down to wait. There was no one I knew in the bar, but, being sociably inclined, I was soon in conversation with two or three other men whose only object seemed to be to while away the time. With them were a couple of fashionably-dressed girls, and by and by I noticed that one of them looked at me frequently, not as if she wanted to begin a flirtation, but rather with curiosity. I had never seen her before, but, beyond wondering vaguely whether she had remarked something peculiar about my appearance, I paid no attention, engaged as I was in discussing cricket with one of the men.

Presently two of them began to talk billiards, at which, it seemed, they were old rivals, and, as neither would admit inferiority, they decided to go upstairs to the billiard-room and play a couple of hundred up.

"We may as well go and watch them," remarked the man with whom I was talking.

"All right," I said, unsuspectingly, and, emptying my glass, I prepared to go upstairs.

The billiard-players led the way, the others following. The girl who had been looking at me was the last except myself to leave the bar. The door-handle apparently slipped from her fingers and the door, which had an ordinary spring, closed in her face with a slam, thus momentarily cutting us off from the others. To my intense surprise she turned and whispered, hurriedly:--

"Don't go upstairs; they will throw you down!"

In another instant she had pulled the door open and was ascending the stairs.

"Wyngate again!" was the thought that flashed through my mind.

At first I was inclined to disregard the warning, but a moment's reflection showed me that there was no disgrace in declining an unequal combat, and that, even if I were not knocked downstairs by some cleverly-contrived "accident," I could be sure of being dealt some underhand blow by agents of so unscrupulous a person as my late guest.

I went up three or four steps, and then--exclaiming, "Forgotten my stick; I'll be back in a moment!"--I returned to the bar, went out quickly by another door, jumped into a hansom, and made good my retreat.

"Two not out, captain!" I remarked, with satisfaction; but, as I was soon to discover, the game was not by any means finished.

I wrote to Hunter at once, asking him if he had wired me to meet him. He replied that he had not done so, and that someone must have been using his name.

The more I thought over the situation the less I liked it. It was evident that I had become the object of a sort of vendetta on the part of a very clever scoundrel, who would stick at nothing to obtain his revenge and was always ready to strike at me when I least expected it. To apply to the police would have been useless, as I had not a scrap of evidence against him. I had slipped through his fingers twice, but I could hardly count upon another such timely warning as I received in the hotel bar. The girl must have known that there was a plot against me, but why did she interfere? Was it caprice or a good instinct?

In the hope of finding out something I dropped in two or three times at the hotel at different hours, but the few guarded inquiries I made led to nothing. The girl and her companions were merely chance customers, quite unknown to the hotel people, who would have been almost as disagreeably surprised as myself if Wyngate's little scheme had succeeded.

Feeling that the air of London was becoming decidedly unwholesome, I went off to my friends at Folkestone, rather unwisely leaving my address, so that letters could be forwarded. Thanks to cheerful surroundings--the society of nice people has a really remarkable effect in changing the current of one's ideas--my enemy's sinister figure began to recede into the background. I was one of a house-party of about a dozen, and they were all intensely interested in my story, though nobody could suggest anything better than going abroad for a year or two.

On the Tuesday after my arrival somebody mentioned that there was to be a ball on the following Monday at one of the hotels on the cliff, and we decided to make up a party and go. Tickets were taken, and, of course, we made no secret of our intention, which was known to the servants, tradespeople, and, in fact, anyone who might have taken an interest in our doings.

On the Monday afternoon, while we were talking and tea-drinking in the drawing-room, Charlie Barbour, one of the party, came in, walked straight up to me, and remarked:--

"Well, old chap, there's some more fun in store for you."

"What on earth do you mean?" I demanded, vaguely uneasy.

"Only that your friend Wyngate is beginning again," he replied.

Then he told us that, happening to stroll into a barber's to get himself smartened up for the evening, he had overheard two men talking confidentially in German while waiting their turn to be shaved. As it happened, Charlie was educated in Germany, and understood the language perfectly well. At first, having no desire to overhear what was not intended for him, he paid no attention, but presently he caught a remark about the ball to which we were going the same evening. Listening more attentively, he made out that somebody at the ball was to be given a letter asking him to come outside for a few minutes on to the terrace at the top of the cliff. This did not at first strike him as suspicious, but when the two men, who looked like innocent commercial travellers, had left the shop it suddenly occurred to Charlie that their conversation might relate to me. It was so very much like Wyngate's style, he thought, to get me on top of a cliff at night, when there would probably be no one to see what happened to me. With this idea in his head, Charlie escaped from the barber's as promptly as possible and spent an hour or two prowling about in search of the two men, but in vain; after which he made for home to tell me his story.

The girls became very much excited, and one of them said I was like the hero of a sensational novel. We held a sort of council of war, and decided that, if any letter of the kind were sent in to me while the dance was going on, I should go outside with a revolver in my pocket, and that Barbour and another man, Carruthers, also armed, should follow close behind.

We were still discussing the affair when a telegram was brought to me. I opened it and read:--

"If you value your life, leave Folkestone immediately."

There was no signature, but I had not the least doubt that the telegram, which came from London, was sent by the unknown girl who had already befriended me once.

Somebody remarked that the situation was becoming quite dramatic. I agreed; but when I asked whether anyone would like to take my part as the hero there were no offers.

Calling in the police was suggested; but Barbour and Carruthers--both strong, active fellows--objected strongly to giving anyone else a chance of capturing a brace of modern desperadoes, and we concluded to keep the matter perfectly quiet, so as to give the enemy no hint of the counter-mine we were preparing.

I never went to such an exciting dance in my life as I did that evening; and all the others in our party were equally on the _qui vive_. I rather enjoyed it after a time, as the ladies were so very anxious to keep me dancing with them; while Barbour and Carruthers several times got into trouble with their partners through trying to keep their eye on me instead of attending to business.

It was nearly twelve o'clock before the expected summons came. I had just taken my partner back to her seat when one of the hotel servants came and told me a gentleman was anxious to see me outside on important business.

Signalling to Barbour and Carruthers, I left the ball-room and strolled as unconcernedly as possible out on to the terrace. There was no moon, and, but for a few twinkling gas-lamps and the light from the hotel windows, all was dark outside. I could just distinguish two men standing on the terrace about twenty yards away. Seeing me walk towards them they moved to meet me, but at this moment Barbour and Carruthers made their appearance behind me. This was quite enough for my enemies. Without a word they turned and ran off at full speed, taking different directions as they reached the main road. We gave chase, but they ran as fast as we did, and we soon lost them in the darkness.

It was annoying to have let the fellows slip through our fingers, but there was some satisfaction in knowing that I was in no danger when with friends, and that Wyngate's emissaries were not conspicuous for courage. Like himself, no doubt, they were ready to strike only when there was no danger of being caught.