The Ashiel mystery. Mrs. Charles Bryce
had been one of the most sea-sick of those aboard—and assisted her ashore, put her into a carriage and ministered to her wants with the help of a tea-basket containing the delicious novelty of English bread and butter. In half an hour's time they were steaming hurriedly towards London. She was to lodge at a small hotel in Jermyn Street; and on that first evening even this seemed perfect to her. The badness of the cooking was a thing she refused to notice; and the astonishing hills and valleys of the bed caused in her no sensation beyond that of surprise. She was young, strong and healthy, and there was no reason that trifling discomforts of this kind should affect her enjoyment. To the shortcomings of the bed, indeed, she shut her eyes in more senses than one, for she was asleep three minutes after her head touched the pillow, nor did she wake till her maid roused her the next morning.
She got up at once and looked out of the window. It was a fine day again; over the roofs of the houses opposite she could see a blue streak of sky. Already the air had lost the touch of freshness which comes, even to London in August, during the first hours of the morning; and the heat in the low-ceilinged room on the third floor which Juliet occupied for the sake of economy, was oppressive in spite of the small sash windows being opened to their utmost capacity. But Juliet only laughed to herself with pleasure at the brilliancy of the day. She felt that the weather was playing up to the occasion, as became this important morning of her life. For that it was important she did not doubt. She was going to hear tremendous news that day; make wonderful discoveries about her birth; hear undreamt-of things. Of this she felt absolutely convinced, and it would not have astonished her to find herself claimed as daughter by any of the reigning families of Europe. She was prepared for anything, or so she said to herself, however astounding; and, that being so, she was excited in proportion. Anyone could have told her that, by this attitude of mind towards the future, she was laying up for herself disappointment at the least, if not the bitterest disillusions; but there was no one to throw cold water on her hopes, and she filled the air with castles of every style of architecture that her fancy suggested, without any hindrance from doubt or misgiving.
She dressed quickly, in the gayest humour, but with even more care than she usually bestowed upon her appearance; a subject to which she always gave the fullest attention.
"Which dress will Mademoiselle wear?" the maid asked her.
"Why, my prettiest, naturally," she replied.
"What, the white one that Mademoiselle wore for the marriage of Monsieur, her papa?" inquired Thérèse, scandalized at the idea of such a precious garment being put on before breakfast.
"That very one," Juliet assured her, undaunted; and was arrayed in it, in spite of obvious disapproval.
After breakfast they went out, and, inquiring their way to Bond Street, flattened their noses against the shop windows to their mutual satisfaction.
They had it almost to themselves, for there were not many people left in that part of London; but more than one head was turned to gaze at the pretty girl in the garden-party dress, who stood transfixed before shop after shop. This amusement lasted till half-past eleven, when they returned to the hotel for Juliet to give the final pats to her hair, and to retilt her hat to an angle possibly more becoming, before she started to keep her appointment with the solicitors. The next twenty minutes were spent in cross-examining the hotel porter as to the time it would take to drive to her destination, and, having decided to start at ten minutes to twelve, in wondering whether the quarter of an hour which had still to elapse would ever come to an end.
At three minutes to twelve she rang the bell of the office of Messrs.
Findlay & Ince.
CHAPTER III
A gloomy little clerk climbed down from a high stool where he sat writing, and opened the door.
"Oh yes, Miss Juliet Byrne," he said when Juliet had told him her name. "Mr. Findlay is expecting you. Will you walk upstairs, Miss Byrne, please. I think you have an appointment for twelve o'clock? This way, if you please."
He led the way up a steep and narrow flight of stairs, which rose out of the black shadows at the end of the passage.
"Ladies find these stairs rather dark, I'm afraid," he remarked pleasantly, as he held open a door and ushered Juliet and her maid into an empty room. "Will you kindly wait here," he continued. "Mr. Findlay is engaged for the moment. You are a leetle before your time, I believe." He pulled out his watch and examined it closely. "Not quite the hour yet," he repeated, and closed it with a snap. "But Mr. Findlay will see you as soon as he is disengaged."
With a flourish of his handkerchief he withdrew, shutting the door behind him.
Juliet sat down on a hard chair covered with green leather, and told her maid to take another. Her spirits were damped. The sight of Mr. Nicol, as the clerk was named, often had that effect upon persons who saw him for the first time; indeed he was found to be a very useful check on troublesome clients, who arrived full of determination to have their own way, and were often so cowed by their preliminary interview with Nicol as to feel it a privilege and a relief subsequently to be bullied by Mr. Ince, or persuaded by Mr. Findlay into the belief that what they had previously decided on was the last thing advisable to do.
Mr. Findlay frequently remarked to Mr. Ince, when his partner's easily roused temper was more highly tried than usual by some imbecile mistake of the clerk's, that Nicol might have faults as a clerk and as a man, but that, as a buffer, he was the nearest approach to perfection obtainable in this world of makeshifts.
To which Mr. Ince would reply with point and fluency that fenders could be had by the dozen from any shipping warehouse, at a lower cost than one week's salary of Nicol's would represent, and would be far more efficient in the office. Still he did not suggest dismissing the man.
Juliet, as she sat and looked round the musty little waiting-room, felt that here was an end of her dreams of the resplendent family she was to find pining to take her to its heart. She felt certain that she could never have any feelings in common with people who could employ a firm of solicitors which in its turn was served by the man who had received her. Romance and the clerk could never, she thought, meet under one roof. And such a roof! The room in which she sat was so dark, so gloomy, so bare and cheerless, that Juliet began to wonder whether she would not have been wiser not to have come. This was not a place, surely, which fond parents would choose for a long-deferred meeting with their child, after years of separation. She walked to the window, but the only view was of a blank wall, and that so close that she could have touched it by leaning out. No wonder the room was dark, even at midday in August. The walls were lined with bookshelves, where heavy volumes, all dealing with the same subject, that of law, stood shoulder to shoulder in stout bindings of brown leather.
There was a fireplace of cracked and dirty marble with an engraving hung over it, representing the coronation of Queen Victoria. A gas stove occupied the grate, and a gas bracket stuck out from the wall on either side of the picture.
On the small round mahogany table that stood in the middle of the room lay a Bible, and a copy of the St. James's Gazette, which was dated a week back. Juliet took it up and read an account of a cricket match without much enthusiasm. Then she flung it down and wandered about the room once more; but she had exhausted all its possibilities; and though she took a volume entitled Causes Célèbres from the shelf, and turned its pages hopefully, she put it back with a grimace at its dullness and a sort of surprise at finding anything drier than the cricket.
She had waited half an hour, when the door opened and the face of Nicol was introduced round the corner of it.
"Will you please come this way," he said.
Telling her maid to stay where she was, Juliet followed him. He opened the other door on the landing, and announced her in a loud voice as, with a quickened pulse, she passed him, and entered the room.
There were two men standing by the hearth. One of them came forward to receive