Dorothy's Double Volume I Part 8

'The Indian sun does not seem to have cooled the enthusiasm of your youth, Hampton. You used to throw yourself then like a young demon into the middle of a football scrimmage, and rowed stroke in that four of yours till you rowed your crew to a standstill, and then tugged away all to yourself, till they got their wind again. To us, jaded men----'

'Shut up, man!' Hampton said hotly, 'this is no joking matter. Here is the honour and happiness of a girl who, when she was a little child, was very dear to me'--Danvers' eyes twinkled momentarily--'and I should be a brute if I did not do everything I could to put the matter straight; and I am quite sure,' he went on more quietly, 'that although, of course, they are not such friends of yours as they are of mine, you would spare no trouble yourself if you only saw any way in which you could be of real a.s.sistance.'

'Perhaps so, old man, perhaps so; but I should not get into fever heat about it. You see, the matter at present princ.i.p.ally concerns Halliburn.

It is his business and privilege to stand first in the line of defence of the character of the young lady to whom he is engaged.'

'And a nice mess he has made of his first move,' Captain Hampton agreed, pointing to the copy of the 'Liar.' 'Well, I won't wait any longer; they dine at seven o'clock when they are alone, and I will go round at eight on the chance of finding them in.'

Danvers sat looking at the empty grate for some minutes after he had left. 'It is about even betting, I should say,' he muttered to himself, 'and I think, if anything, the odds are slightly on Hampton, though he has not the slightest idea at present that he has entered for the race.

The other one has got the start, but Hampton always had no end of last, and he will take every fence well, and it seems to me there are likely to be some awkward ones. Besides, I am not half sure that the other fellow will run straight when the pinch comes.'

When Captain Hampton presented himself at the house in Chester Square, he found, to his satisfaction, that Mr. Hawtrey and his daughter were at home.

'They have just finished dinner, sir,' the servant said; 'dessert is on the table.'

'Then I will go in,' Captain Hampton said, and, opening the dining-room door, walked in.

'I am presuming on my old footing to enter unceremoniously, Mr.

Hawtrey,' he said.

'I am glad to see you. You are heartily welcome, Ned. This reminds one of old times indeed.'

Dorothy's welcome was sensibly cooler, while Mrs. Daintree, who had from the first set herself strongly against his intimacy at the house, was absolutely frigid.

Ned saw that Dorothy's colour had perceptibly paled since he last saw her, and that she looked hara.s.sed and anxious.

'It is three weeks since I saw you,' he said.

'Is it?' she asked with an air of indifference. He laughed outright.

'That was really very well done, Dorothy, and I quite understand what it means. You think I have been neglecting you altogether, and amusing myself while you were in trouble; and were that the case I should deserve all the snubbing, and more, that you could give me. I believe that your father has not told you what I have been doing, and I do not wish to enter into details now,' and he glanced towards Mrs. Daintree, 'but I feel that I must, in justice to myself, a.s.sure you that the whole of my time has been occupied in the matter, and that although I have no success to boast of, I have, at least, tried my very best to deserve it.'

'That is good of you, Ned,' the girl said brightly. 'I have been feeling a little hurt at your desertion, and thought it did not seem like you to leave me in trouble. I always used to rely upon you when I got into a sc.r.a.pe. I don't want to know what you have been doing, though father can tell me if he likes, but I am quite content to take your word for it.

Now I must go; it is time for us to dress. I wish I could stay at home and have a quiet evening, but you see I am no longer quite my own mistress.'

'Well, Hampton, what have you been doing, and why have you not been to see me before? I heard you were in town--at least, I heard so ten days ago.'

'I should have come, sir, before, had I had anything to tell you. I have nothing much now, and in fact have to-day bungled matters considerably; still, I shall start on a fresh search to-morrow, and hope to be luckier than I have been so far.' He then gave a detailed account of his visits to racecourses, of his meeting with Truscott that morning, of the conversation he had overheard, and of the manner in which the man had eluded him.

'Well, Ned, you certainly have deserved success, and I am indeed obliged to you for the immense trouble you have taken over the matter. It is too bad your spending your time over this annoying affair, when you are only home on a year's leave. What you have learned is, of course, no direct proof that Truscott has a hand in this affair; at the same time, what he said confirms to some extent your suspicions of him. Would it not be as well to put the search for him into the hands of a detective, now that there is some one definite to search for? One of these men might be useful, and I really would vastly rather employ one than know that you are spending day after day searching for him yourself. These men are accustomed to the work; they know exactly the persons to whom to apply; they have agents under them, who know infinitely better the sort of place where such a fellow would be likely to take up his quarters than you can do.'

'No doubt that is so,' Captain Hampton admitted reluctantly. 'I should have liked to have run him down myself, now that I have hunted him so long. Still, that is a matter of no importance, the great thing is to lose no time. I will get Danvers to give me a note to the man he spoke to first.'

'On my behalf, remember, Ned; he must be engaged on my behalf.'

'Very well, sir, if you wish it so; but I would rather that you and I arrange with him direct, and that it is not done by your solicitors.

Danvers told me that you were going to them this morning about that infamous paragraph in the "Liar."'

'Certainly they shall have nothing to do with it,' Mr. Hawtrey said hotly; 'I was a fool to go to them at all; I might as well have gone to two old women. They have been lawyers to our family for I don't know how many years, and are no doubt excellent men in their capacity of family lawyers, but this matter is altogether out of their line. They looked at each other like two helpless fools when I told them the story, and said at once that they would not undertake to advise me, but that I had better go to Levine, or one of the other men who are always engaged in these what they call delicate cases, that is to say, hideous scandals.

However, I have made up my mind to keep clear of them all as far as I can; but, of course, I must be guided to some extent by Halliburn's opinion, or rather his wishes. As to his opinion, I have no confidence in it one way or the other. I'm glad you did not say anything about what you had been doing before my cousin; she is worrying herself almost into a fever about it, the more so because there is no one to whom she can talk about it. She means well, but were it not that just at present it is absolutely necessary that Dorothy should show herself everywhere with a perfectly unconcerned air, I would make some excuse to send Mrs.

Daintree down to the country again; as it is, I must keep her as a chaperon, but she is very trying I a.s.sure you, and I believe would come into my study to cry over the affair half-a-dozen times a day, if I would but let her. Now, Ned, you must excuse me, the carriage will be round in a few minutes, and as, with one thing and another, I got back too late to dress for dinner, I have not another minute to spare. Shall I give you a note authorising you to arrange with the detective?'

'There is no occasion for that; I shall speak in your name, and as he will want to have an interview with you before long, you can then confirm any arrangement I have made as to his remuneration.'

Hampton called in on Danvers in the morning for the address of the detective, Slippen, and a card of introduction. The address was in Clifford's Inn, and on finding the number Hampton saw the name over a door on the ground floor. A sharp looking boy was sitting on a high stool swinging his legs. He evidently thought that amus.e.m.e.nt somewhat monotonous and was glad of a change, for he jumped down with alacrity.

'The governor is in, sir, but he has got a party in with him. I will take your card in. I expect he will be glad to get rid of her, for she has been sobbing and crying in there awful.'

'I am in no particular hurry,' Captain Hampton said, amused at the boy's confidential manner.

'Divorce, I expect,' the lad went on, as Captain Hampton took a seat on the only chair in the dark little office. 'I allus notice that the first time they comes they usually goes on like that. After a time or two they takes it more business-like. They comes in brisk, and says, "Is Mr.

Slippen in?" just the same as if they was asking for a cup of tea. When they goes out sometimes they look sour, and I knows then that he,' and he jerked his thumb towards the inner office, 'hasn't any news to tell 'em; sometimes they goes out looking red in the face and in a regular paddy, and you can see by the way they grips their umbrellas they would like to give it to some one.'

'You must find it dull sitting here all day. I suppose you haven't much writing to do?'

'I doesn't sit here much. I am mostly about. There ain't many as comes here of a day, and he can hear the knocker. Those as does come calls mostly in the morning, from ten to eleven. There, she is a-moving.'

The inner door opened, and a stout woman came out looking flushed and angry; the boy slid off his stool and opened the door for her, and then took Captain Hampton's card in. A moment later Mr. Slippen himself appeared at the door.

'Will you walk in, Captain Hampton? I am sorry to have kept you waiting.

I rather expected,' he said, as he closed the door behind him, 'that I should have a call, either from Mr. Danvers or some one from him, when I saw that paragraph in the "Liar." I made sure it was the case he was speaking to me about, and I said to myself, "They are safe to be doing something now."'

'Yes, it is that case that I come about. I am here on the part of Mr.

Hawtrey, the father of the young lady. I am an intimate friend of the family. Mr. Danvers gave you the heads of the matter.'

The detective nodded; he was a rather short, slightly-built man, with hair cut very short and standing up aggressively; his eyes were widely opened, with a sharp, quick movement as they glanced from one point to another, but the general expression of the face was pleasant and good-tempered.

'He told you my opinion so far as I could form it from the very slight data he gave me?'

'Yes, you thought at first that the writer of the threats really had possession of compromising letters; but upon hearing that she was engaged you thought it likely that the letters might be the work of some aggrieved or disappointed woman.'

'That is it, sir.'

'So far as we can see,' Captain Hampton went on, 'neither view was correct; certainly the first was not. We have, as we think, laid our fingers on the writer, who is a man who believes himself to have a personal grievance against Mr. Hawtrey himself.' He then related the whole story.

'He may be the man,' Mr. Slippen said, when he had finished. 'At any rate there is something to go on, which there was not before. There will be no great difficulty in laying one's hand on him, but at present we have not a shred of real evidence--nothing that a magistrate would listen to.'

'We quite see that. Still, it will be something to find him; then we can have him watched, and, if possible, caught in the act of posting the letters.'

'You will find that difficult--I do not mean the watching him nor seeing him post his letters, but bringing it home to him. I would rather have to deal with anything than with a matter where you have got the Post Office people to get round. Once a letter is in a box it is their property until it is handed over to the person it is directed to. Still, we may get over that, somehow. The first thing, I take it, is to find the man. You say his betting name is Marvel?'

'That is the name he had on his hat at Epsom on the Oaks day, but he may have a dozen others.'

'Ah, that is true enough. Still, no doubt he has used it often enough for others to know him by it; and now for his description.

'Thank you, that will be sufficient. I think I will send a man down to Windsor at once; the races are on again to-day. He will get his address out of one or other of his pals. It will cost a five-pound note at the outside. If you will give me your address, I shall most likely be able to let you have it this evening.'

'I wish to goodness I had come to you before,' Captain Hampton said.

'Here I have been wasting three weeks trying to find the man, and spending fifty or sixty pounds in railway fares, stand tickets and expenses, and you are able to undertake it at once.'