The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
whom they had seen with their own eyes, and whom we urged them to pursue with all expedition. Meanwhile, Charles and I, accompanied by the Colonel and the attaché—“to see the fun out,” as they said—called at the Bank of France for the purpose of stopping the notes immediately. It was too late, however. They had been presented at once, and cashed in gold, by a pleasant little lady in an American costume, who was afterwards identified by the hotel-keeper (from our description) as his lodger, Mme. Picardet. It was clear she had taken rooms in the same hotel, to be near the Indian Colonel; and it was she who had received and sent the letters. As for our foe, he had vanished into space, as always.
Two days later we received the usual insulting communication on a sheet of Charles’s own dainty note. Last time he wrote it was on Craig-Ellachie paper: this time, like the wanton lapwing, he had got himself another crest.
MOST PERSPICACIOUS OF MILLIONAIRES!—
Said I not well, as Medhurst, that you must distrust everybody? And the one man you never dreamt of distrusting was—Medhurst. Yet see how truthful I was! I told you I knew where Colonel Clay was living—and I did know, exactly. I promised to take you to Colonel Clay’s rooms, and to get him arrested for you—and I kept my promise. I even exceeded your expectations; for I gave you two Colonel Clays instead of one—and you took the wrong man—that is to say, the real one. This was a neat little trick; but it cost me some trouble.
First, I found out there was a real Colonel Clay, in the Indian Army. I also found out he chanced to be coming home on leave this season. I might have made more out of him, no doubt; but I disliked annoying him, and preferred to give myself the fun of this peculiar mystification. I therefore waited for him to reach Paris, where the police arrangements suited me better than in London. While I was looking about, and delaying operations for his return, I happened to hear you wanted a detective. So I offered myself as out of work to my old employer, Marvillier, from whom I have had many good jobs in the past; and there you get, in short, the kernel of the Colonel.
Naturally, after this, I can never go back as a detective to Marvillier’s. But, on the large scale on which I have learned to work since I first had the pleasure of making your delightful acquaintance, this matters little. To say the truth, I begin to feel detective work a cut or two below me. I am now a gentleman of means and leisure. Besides, the extra knowledge of your movements which I have acquired in your house has helped still further to give me various holds upon you. So the fluke will be true to his own pet lamb. To vary the metaphor, you are not fully shorn yet.
Remember me most kindly to your charming family, give Wentworth my love, and tell Mlle. Césarine I owe her a grudge which I shall never forget. She clearly suspected me. You are much too rich, dear Charles; I relieve your plethora. I bleed you financially. Therefore I consider myself—Your sincerest friend,
CLAY-BRABAZON-MEDHURST,
Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.
Charles was threatened with apoplexy. This blow was severe. “Whom can I trust,” he asked, plaintively, “when the detectives themselves, whom I employ to guard me, turn out to be swindlers? Don’t you remember that line in the Latin grammar—something about, ‘Who shall watch the watchers?’ I think it used to run, ‘Quis custodes custodiet ipsos?’”
But I felt this episode had at least disproved my suspicions of poor Césarine.
Colonel Clay in THE EPISODE OF THE SELDON GOLD-MINE, by Grant Allen
On our return to London, Charles and Marvillier had a difference of opinion on the subject of Medhurst.
Charles maintained that Marvillier ought to have known the man with the cropped hair was Colonel Clay, and ought never to have recommended him. Marvillier maintained that Charles had seen Colonel Clay half-a-dozen times, at least, to his own never; and that my respected brother-in-law had therefore nobody on earth but himself to blame if the rogue imposed upon him. The head detective had known Medhurst for ten years, he said, as a most respectable man, and even a ratepayer; he had always found him the cleverest of spies, as well he might be, indeed, on the familiar set-a-thief-to-catch-a-thief principle. However, the upshot of it all was, as usual—nothing. Marvillier was sorry to lose the services of so excellent a hand; but he had done the very best he could for Sir Charles, he declared; and if Sir Charles was not satisfied, why, he might catch his Colonel Clays for himself in future.
“So I will, Sey,” Charles remarked to me, as we walked back from the office in the Strand by Piccadilly. “I won’t trust any more to these private detectives. It’s my belief they’re a pack of thieves themselves, in league with the rascals they’re set to catch, and with no more sense of honour than a Zulu diamond-hand.”
“Better try the police,” I suggested, by way of being helpful. One must assume an interest in one’s employer’s business.
But Charles shook his head. “No, no,” he said; “I’m sick of all these fellows. I shall trust in future to my own sagacity. We learn by experience, Sey—and I’ve learned a thing or two. One of them is this: It’s not enough to suspect everybody; you must have no preconceptions. Divest yourself entirely of every fixed idea if you wish to cope with a rascal of this calibre. Don’t jump at conclusions. We should disbelieve everything, as well as distrust everybody. That’s the road to success; and I mean to pursue it.”
So, by way of pursuing it, Charles retired to Seldon.
“The longer the man goes on, the worse he grows,” he said to me one morning. “He’s just like a tiger that has tasted blood. Every successful haul seems only to make him more eager for another. I fully expect now before long we shall see him down here.”
About three weeks later, sure enough, my respected connection received a communication from the abandoned swindler, with an Austrian stamp and a Vienna post-mark.
MY DEAR VANDRIFT.—(After so long and so varied an acquaintance we may surely drop the absurd formalities of ‘Sir Charles’ and ‘Colonel.’) I write to ask you a delicate question. Can you kindly tell me exactly how much I have received from your various generous acts during the last three years? I have mislaid my account-book, and as this is the season for making the income tax return, I am anxious, as an honest and conscientious citizen, to set down my average profits out of you for the triennial period. For reasons which you will amply understand, I do not this time give my private address, in Paris or elsewhere; but if you will kindly advertise the total amount, above the signature ‘Peter Simple,’ in the Agony Column of the Times, you will confer a great favour upon the Revenue Commissioners, and also upon your constant friend and companion,
CUTHBERT CLAY,
“Practical Socialist.”
“Mark my word, Sey,” Charles said, laying the letter down, “in a week or less the man himself will follow. This is his cunning way of trying to make me think he’s well out of the country and far away from Seldon. That means he’s meditating another descent. But he told us too much last time, when he was Medhurst the detective. He gave us some hints about disguises and their unmasking that I shall not forget. This turn I shall be even with him.”
On Saturday of that week, in effect, we were walking along the road that leads into the village, when we met a gentlemanly-looking man, in a rough and rather happy-go-lucky brown tweed suit, who had the air of a tourist. He was middle-aged, and of middle height; he wore a small leather wallet suspended round his shoulder; and he was peering about at the rocks in a suspicious manner. Something in his gait attracted our attention.
“Good-morning,” he said, looking up as we passed; and Charles muttered a somewhat surly inarticulate, “Good-morning.”
We went on without saying more. “Well, that’s not Colonel Clay, anyhow,” I said, as we got out of earshot. “For he accosted us first; and you may remember it’s one of the Colonel’s most marked peculiarities that, like the model child, he never speaks till he’s spoken to—never begins an acquaintance. He always waits till we make the first advance; he doesn’t go out of his way to cheat us; he loiters about till we ask him to do it.”
“Seymour,”