The Ivory Gate, a new edition. Walter Besant
only one murder in the whole history of the world. All the other murders, even that of Abel himself, are of no concern at all – not one bit. He isn't interested in them. They don't matter to him a red cent. That's my case. The robbery of eight years ago, which took a few hundred pounds from a rich man, changed my whole life; it drove me out into the world; it forced me for a time to live among the prodigals and the swine and the husks. It handed me over to a thousand devils; and you ask me what robbery?'
'I am very sorry. It is now a forgotten thing. Nobody remembers it any more. I doubt whether Mr. Dering himself ever thinks of it.'
'Well, what was discovered after all? Who did it?'
'Nothing at all has been discovered. No one knows to this day who did it.'
'Nothing at all? – I am disappointed. Hasn't old Checkley done time for it? Nothing found out?'
'Nothing. The notes were stopped in time, and were never presented. After five or six years the Bank of England gave Mr. Dering notes in the place of those stolen. And that is all there is to tell.'
'Nothing discovered! And the notes never presented? What good did the fellow get by it, then?'
'I don't know. But nothing was discovered.'
'Nothing discovered!' Athelstan repeated. 'Why, I took it for granted that the truth had come out long since. I was making up my mind to call upon old Dering. I don't think I shall go now. – And my sister Hilda will not be coming here to express her contrition. I am disappointed.'
'You can see Elsie if you like.'
'Yes – I can see her,' he repeated. – 'George' – he returned to the old subject – 'do you know the exact particulars of that robbery?'
'There was a forged cheque, and the Bank paid it across the counter.'
'The cheque,' Athelstan explained, 'was made payable to the order of a certain unknown person named Edmund Gray. It was endorsed by that name. To prove that forgery, they should have got the cheque and examined the endorsement. That was the first thing, certainly. I wonder how they began.'
'I do not know. It was while I was in my articles, and all we heard was a vague report. You ought not to have gone away. You should have stayed to fight it out.'
'I was right to give up my berth after what the chief said. How could I remain drawing his pay and doing his work, when he had calmly given me to understand that the forgery lay between two hands, and that he strongly suspected mine?'
'Did Mr. Dering really say so? Did he go so far as that?'
'So I walked out of the place. I should have stayed at home and waited for the clearing up of the thing, but for my own people – who – well – you know – So I went away in a rage.'
'And have you come back – as you went – in a rage?'
'Well – you see, that is the kind of fire that keeps alight of its own accord.'
'I believe that some sort of a search was made for this Edmund Gray; but I do not know how long it lasted or who was employed.'
'Detectives are no good. Perhaps the chief didn't care to press the business. Perhaps he learned enough to be satisfied that Checkley was the man. Perhaps he was unwilling to lose an old servant. Perhaps the villain confessed the thing. It all comes back to me fresh and clear, though for eight long years I have not talked with a soul about it.'
'Tell me,' said George, a little out of sympathy with this dead and buried forgery – 'tell me where you have been – what you have done – and what you are doing now.'
'Presently – presently,' he replied with impatience. 'I am sure now that I was wrong. I should not have left the country. I should have taken a lodging openly, and waited and looked on. Yes; that would have been better. Then I should have seen that old villain, Checkley, in the dock. Perhaps it is not yet too late. Still – eight years. Who can expect a commissionaire to remember a single message after eight years?'
'Well – and now tell me,' George asked again, 'what you have been doing.'
'The black-sheep always turns up, doesn't he? You learn at home that he has got a berth in the Rocky Mountains; but he jacks it up and goes to Melbourne, where he falls on his feet; but gets tired, and moves on to New Zealand, and so home again. It's a regular round.'
'You are apparently the black-sheep whose wool is dyed white. There are threads of gold in it. You look prosperous.'
'A few years ago I was actually in the possession of money. Then I became poor again. After a good many adventures I became a journalist. The profession is in America the refuge of the educated unsuccessful, and the hope of the uneducated unsuccessful. I am doing as well as journalists in America generally do: I am over here as the representative of a Francisco paper. And I expect to stay for some time – so long as I can be of service to my people. That's all.'
'Well – it might be a great deal worse. And won't you come to Pembridge Crescent with me?'
'When the cloud is lifted: not before. And – George – not a word about me. Don't tell – yet – even Elsie.'
CHAPTER VI
SOMETHING MORE HAPPENS
Checkley held the door of the office wide open, and invited Elsie to enter. The aspect of the room, solid of furniture, severe in its fittings, with its vast table covered with papers, struck her with a kind of terror. At the table sat her guardian, austere of countenance.
All the way along she had been imagining a dialogue. He would begin with certain words. She would reply, firmly but respectfully, with certain other words. He would go on. She would again reply. And so on. Everybody knows the consolations of imagination in framing dialogues at times of trouble. They never come off. The beginning is never what is expected, and the sequel, therefore, has to be changed on the spot. The conditions of the interview had not been realised by Elsie. Also the beginning was not what she expected. For her guardian, instead of frowning with a brow of corrugated iron, and holding up a finger of warning, received her more pleasantly than she had imagined it possible for him, bade her sit down, and leaned back, looking at her kindly.
'And so,' he said, 'you are twenty-one – twenty-one – to-day. I am no longer your guardian. You are twenty-one. Everything that is past seems to have happened yesterday. So that it is needless to say that you were a baby only yesterday.'
'Yes; I am really twenty-one.'
'I congratulate you. To be twenty-one is, I believe, for a young lady at least, a pleasant time of life. For my own part, I have almost forgotten the memory of youth. Perhaps I never had the time to be young. Certainly I have never understood why some men regret their youth so passionately. As for your sex, Elsie, I know very little of it except in the way of business. In that way, which does not admit of romance, I must say that I have sometimes found ladies importunate, tenacious, exacting, persistent, and even revengeful.'
'Oh!' said Elsie, with a little winning smile of conciliation. This was only a beginning – a prelude – before the unpleasantness.
'That, Elsie, is my unfortunate experience of women – always in the way of business, which of course may bring out the worst qualities. In society, of which I have little experience, they are doubtless – charming – charming.' He repeated the word, as if he had found an adjective of whose meaning he was not quite clear. 'An old bachelor is not expected, at the age of seventy-five, to know much about such a subject. The point before us is that you have this day arrived at the mature age of twenty-one. That is the first thing, and I congratulate you. The first thing.'
'I wonder,' thought Elsie timidly, 'when he will begin upon the next thing – the real thing.'
There lay upon the table before him a paper with notes upon it. He took it up, looked at it, and laid it down again. Then he turned to Elsie and smiled – he actually smiled – he unmistakably smiled. 'At twenty-one,' he said, 'some young ladies who are heiresses come into their property – '
'Those who are heiresses. Unhappily, I am not.'
'Come into their property – their property. It must be a beautiful thing for a girl