The Mystery of Lincoln's Inn Part 7

Williamson stood waiting, while he tried to read his master's face, but Silwood's air was perfectly inscrutable.

"I shall not go at once," said Silwood. "I have not quite finished; but there is no need for any one to stay."

He gathered the letters together in a bunch, and pa.s.sed them on to Williamson.

"By the way," he asked, looking at the clerk with a sharp glance, "how does Mr. Eversleigh strike you? I'm afraid he's not very well."

"I thought he seemed poorly--very poorly," replied Williamson. "I felt very sorry for him, and I ventured to suggest--having been with the firm so many years, sir--to him that he needed a holiday."

"You did! That was good. It's my own idea, too. And what did he say?"

"He said he was all right, or soon would be; there was nothing much the matter with him. Said it was the heat."

"But about taking a holiday?"

"He said it was not at all necessary."

"Well, I agree with you, Mr. Williamson. It seems to me that he does need a change. I told him that also. I urged him to take a month off, but he won't hear of it. He keeps on saying he is not ill really--only a bit out of sorts owing to the hot weather. And it is hot, isn't it? I must confess I feel this frightful heat very much; the office is horribly close. Unless the weather becomes cooler, I declare I shall require a holiday myself. And if Mr. Eversleigh still persists in refusing a holiday--well, I believe I shall take one. I haven't had a real vacation for a very long time. But I had much rather he went."

"You certainly have had no holiday, Mr. Silwood, for a long time--three or four years, it must be," said Williamson, immensely surprised at the turn the conversation had taken. "When would you think of going, sir?"

"Oh, I haven't thought much about it all," replied Silwood; "my taking a holiday is only a possibility. Still, if this heat does not moderate, I should not wonder if I did go. But it's not settled."

"I understand, sir," said Williamson, who, as a matter of fact, was completely mystified. "What's up now?" he asked himself. Still, on reflection, he had to admit there was no reason why Silwood should not take a holiday if he wished to do so.

"That's all, I think," said Silwood; and with a nod he dismissed the head-clerk.

Silwood waited for half an hour, so as to allow plenty of time for all the clerks to have left the office, and then he took a look into the various rooms to see if there was any one still there; but they were all empty. Satisfied on this point, he returned to his own room and shut himself in.

Next he went to the large j.a.panned box in the corner, touched the concealed spring, and laid open the secret chamber, from which he took a number of papers, including the sheet of figures against which were placed initials. He pored over these papers, studying them with the intentness of one who is committing a subject to memory. He made two or three alterations in the figures, and then put all the doc.u.ments back in their hiding-place. He tried to close up the chamber, but the spring would not work properly. He tried again and again, but he did not succeed.

With each failure his manner showed a rapidly rising agitation, an increasing apprehension, his usual impa.s.sivity dropping away from him completely. He examined the mechanism of the arrangement, but he could find nothing wrong with it; so far as he could see, it appeared to be in perfect order. As he struggled with it, his pale face became extraordinarily livid, his lips twitched convulsively, the perspiration stood in beads on his forehead. For he knew that if the box would not shut, then his scheme would tumble to pieces.

He had almost given it up in despair when the accidental pressure of his knee against one of the sides of the box caused the spring to act, and the opening suddenly closed up of itself.

Trembling and gasping, Silwood sat down and looked at the box as if it were some hateful living thing.

"It ought to be seen to," he said to himself, "but I cannot permit any one to touch it. No one but myself must know of the secret chamber--that is vital. And yet--no, I must run the risk."

He went on looking darkly at the box.

"Oh, what a fright you gave me!" he said aloud to it, and then glanced about fearfully at the sound of his own voice. "How absurd!" he said to himself, rea.s.suringly. "I must not let the thing get on my nerves like this."

It was now not far from eight o'clock, which was the hour for Silwood's dinner. In a few minutes more, therefore, he betook himself to the restaurant in Holborn which he was in the habit of patronizing. A little after nine he walked back to Lincoln's Inn, which he entered by the small door at the side of the fine gateway opening into Lincoln's Inn Fields. He spoke to the porter for some seconds, and then went on to his private chambers in Stone Buildings, his rooms being on the top floor of the north-east corner building overlooking Chancery Lane. He had lived here for several years.

After he had let himself in he locked the door, filled a black clay pipe and lit it, took an armchair and sat down. And there he sat for a long while very still and quiet, save for the puff--puff--puffing of the smoke from his lips. The pipe burnt itself out, and he looked at his watch.

"It is too soon," he said to himself; and he filled a second black clay pipe. And this too he smoked out.

With a leisurely movement he at length rose and went to the window, threw up the sash, and peered out into the half-darkness of the street.

He ran his eye up and down Chancery Lane, and noted that all the lights except the street-lamps were out, and that the pavements were bare of human forms, save for one or two dark-flitting, shadowy beings.

"It will soon be time," he thought; and he closed the window.

He sat down again, and proceeded to smoke a third pipe. All the while he had been going over the details of his scheme; now he was thinking whether he had not been too abrupt in making the suggestion that he might take a holiday to Williamson.

"What does it matter?" he concluded; "he knows nothing."

He smoked on until twelve boomed through the air--the strokes came in a great volume of sound from the clocks in the Strand and from far and near. When it had died away, he put down his pipe, and walked into his bedroom.

But it was not to go to bed.

For, a few minutes later, a figure emerged from Cooper Silwood's bedroom--the figure of a man of the height and general build of Cooper Silwood, but otherwise not like him in the least. Yet it was he, though changed beyond recognition.

His mien was that of a respectable workman in his everyday clothes. They were such clothes as might be worn by men of half a dozen different trades with equal appropriateness, so little distinctive of any one trade were they, and yet they stamped themselves unmistakably as a workman's clothes. Silwood wore them like one who was thoroughly at home in them; he moved at ease in them. To all appearance he was a workman, and from his bearing it might be guessed that the part he was playing was no new one. To be in this disguise was no novelty to him.

That it was no new _role_ for him to a.s.sume was also manifest from the skill and success with which his face was made up. To begin with, the heavy brown wig he usually had on his head had disappeared, and he was now quite bald, with the exception of a narrow fringe of dark-grey hair round the base of the skull. He was no longer clean-shaven; an untidy blackish moustache covered his upper lip. A dark line had been pencilled on either side of his nose, these lines alone imparting to the face a marvellous change in its expression. Besides, the skin of the face had been slightly stained, as had also been that of the hands.

His disguise was absolute. His own mother, as the phrase goes, would not have known him. He looked to the life the part he was playing. Mr.

Cooper Silwood, the eminent solicitor, had disappeared, and a sober, respectable workman had taken his place.

Could Francis Eversleigh now have seen this partner of his he would have had much food for thought; if he could have followed him he would have had much more.

The night was now very still--the roar of London was hushed. Silwood opened his door gently, and listened. The stairs were lit, but no sound came from any of the chambers. Locking his door softly, he stole down into the court of Stone Buildings; they, too, were wrapped in silence.

For a moment he stood still and strained his ears to catch the slightest noise, but there was not a breath. Taking from his pocket a key, he unlocked a small iron gate at the north-east corner of the court, and pa.s.sed through it and went along a short narrow footway closed on the Chancery Lane side by another iron gate, which he opened, and so reached Chancery Lane. All this he did without hurry or confusion. It was plain that he had got out of Lincoln's Inn by this footway many times before.

Yet it was believed to be shut up every evening by the porter, who was supposed to be the only person possessing the keys of the gates.

From this footway--which is not much used even in the day-time, and is hardly to be noticed at all in the night-time--to Holborn is but a step.

Silwood found Chancery Lane deserted; no one saw him emerge from the Inn. He was quickly in Holborn, and set out eastwards at a rapid pace.

And on he went, mile after mile, stepping out briskly, through the city proper, and on, on beyond it until he reached one of the great districts of East-End London, where in small humble houses, huddled together in a wilderness of mean streets, thousands upon thousands live out their obscure and uneventful lives.

Silwood went on like a man who knows his way well. Never once did he pause until he reached the end of his journey. He halted at a door in Douglas Street, Stepney, and knocked a peculiar knock. Two or three minutes pa.s.sed, and then a light was shown at the window, whereupon Silwood knocked in the same way a second time.

"Is it you, James?" asked a woman's voice, as the door was partially opened.

"Yes, Meg; let me in," said Silwood.

"I did not expect you," she said, while Silwood embraced her affectionately. "Is anything the matter?"

The woman who put the question was a plump, personable woman of about forty, with kindly brown eyes and a tender mouth. She loved but was rather afraid of this man, who yet was always good and kind to her. But he had told her very little about himself. She knew he was engaged in some mysterious business which necessitated long absences from her, and the wearing of a disguise; she had tried to guess the nature of his business, and had come to the conclusion that it was some kind of secret police work.

Any romance there was in Silwood's life was connected with this woman, of whom he was sincerely fond, though he was still fonder of their child. Some years before, an accident one evening in the street led to his meeting her, and he took a fancy to her. The thing jumping well with other things he followed her up and married her, though he was careful not to let her know who he was.

When with her and the child Silwood was another man; he seemed to have shed like a skin the cold formality which characterized him in Lincoln's Inn; his very nature appeared changed.

"Is anything the matter?" she asked.

"No, Meg, though there's news. But how is Davy?"