CHAPTER X.LORD SEAMORD'S FALSE FUNERAL.
The stealing of the body— The large reward—The tragical and mysterious disappearance—Death of Mdlle. Rousell—The dead lord comes to life in New York—The extraordinary disclosures.
"I never was so astonished in all my life!" said D——, the well known detective, whom I met accidentally in the Strand.
"I thought men of your experience were never surprised at anything," was my answer.
"But this is such a peculiar, out of the way case."
"It is not the loss of a dressing-case, then, nor a mysterious murder?"
"No, a body has unaccountably disappeared from the family vault!"
"That is an American trick," I replied. "How much money do they want for the safe return of the corpse?"
"None at all. Heavy rewards are offered, but without response. It does not appear to be a case of black-mailing."
"How, then," I asked, "was it discovered that the corpse had walked?"
"By an anonymous letter."
"Just so—from one of the thieves, no doubt. To regain possession of the body, you must bid higher—it is a question of money."
"There you are wrong. The writer of the anonymous letter has been found."
"Well?"
"He is a respectable tenant on the deceased man's estate."
"What explanation does he give?"
"He says he was returning from market late one night when he was greatly alarmed by seeing lights in the family vault. It was rumoured at the time of the funeral that certain valuable relics were interred with the body, and he thought robbers were despoiling the dead. Next morning he did not know what to do. He was afraid his statement would be laughed at, so he decided to send the unsigned letter. Here is a copy of it. It is addressed to the family solicitor. "Passing Lord Seamord's last resting place," he wrote, "between nine and ten p.m. yesterday, the writer was greatly astonished to see lights in the vault, and an examination will prove that the dead has been disturbed"."
"And how long ago did this happen?" I asked.
"Three months."
"Did you confine your advertisements to any particular newspaper? This is the first I have heard of the occurrence."
"When it was proved that the body had really been carried off, a communication was at once sent to the chief, who decided on secrecy. Like you, he thought it was a question of money, and daily expected that the thieves would open up a correspondence with the family. But nothing of the kind has taken place. When two months had passed without any sign, we tried the advertisements, but nothing has come of them."
"In what hole-and-corner papers did you insert the advertisements?"
He handed me a slip on which was printed the following:—
"Craigmillar.—On the night of the 15th November last something valuable disappeared near this place, and the family are prepared to pay a large reward for its return, or for a correct intimation where it can be found.—Information, which will be treated as strictly confidential, to be sent to R. B. Johnson, Esq., solicitor, Craigmillar."
"Did you ever try naming a sum of money?"
"Yes, first £1,000, and then £5,000."
"Would the family go higher than that?"
"I am sure they would. What can the thieves mean?"
"There is some hidden mystery. You are right in saying the case is peculiar."
Here was a complication after my own heart. Awake and asleep the subject haunted me. I worked out all manner of solutions, but none of them brought me any nearer the secret; and when you learn the marvellous particulars you will not blame me for my stupidity. Of all the extraordinary revelations made known to the public, this one, it will be readily admitted, takes a prominent place.
Who was this Lord Seamord? For obvious reasons, I use an assumed name. At Elliott and Fry's I got his portrait for a shilling. It is lying before me now. Not a man to make an enemy of. His chin betokens resolution; lips, firmness; nostrils, daring; eyes, cruelty; forehead, intellect. He was a tall man I ascertained, and dark enough to have been taken for a Spaniard. Debrett told me that he had been an only child; that he married a duke's daughter, that there was no issue of the marriage, and that when his decease occurred he must have been thirty-five years of age. From private sources, from men who had frequented the same clubs as his lordship, I received a very bad account of him. He was, according to them, an individual to be avoided. The girls he had seduced, the friends he had ruined at play, the duels he had fought, some of them with fatal results, would fill a volume. He took no active part in politics, and seemed to live entirely for his own amusement. His wife, who was very pretty, and who it was said, worshipped him, was sadly neglected; and he resided principally on the Continent.
The next heir to the title and estate was a cousin, who was not a little surprised to be informed that everything that money could be raised on had been mortgaged. This was all the more strange when it was known, that Lord Seamord was unusually careful in monetary matters, and that most of his speculations resulted in an addition to his large fortune. What had become of these immense sums of money?
This was the first question I set myself to answer. I was charmed with the insurmountable difficulties surrounding the case, and entered on the investigation with great relish. You may ask what business it was of mine, and the only reply I think it necessary to give is that the enquiry interested me, and that if success crowned my efforts I could if I chose earn a large sum of money.
I went down to Craigmillar, but the information I gleaned there did not amount to much. No one could say how the money had gone. His lordship was at Milan when he died, and he had with him a servant called Robert Simmons. This man had been in the family for many years, but he was much disliked. Like master like man. There was nobody to say a good word about either. It was thought that Simmons was a ready and willing assistant in the many villainies perpetrated by Lord Seamord. To my enquiry as to what had become of Simmons, I was told that he left soon after the funeral, and had not been heard of since. This was suspicious. There were now two questions in my note book—first, how had the money been disposed of? and the second, why had the servant disappeared?
I may or may not have had an interview with the family solicitor, but at all events I went on the Continent, and traced his lordship on his last journey to the town in which he died. Up to reaching Milan I found nothing remarkable. His stay in Paris was short, and presented no feature of interest. The people at the hotel knew him well, and I had no trouble in getting at his daily doings. At Milan the case was different. It assumed the mysterious at once. To begin with, he dropped the title and used a feigned name. He kept changing his hotel, and finally rented a house of his own. Altogether he remained in this rather dull Italian town upwards of six months. There must have been a powerful reason, I thought, for his prolonged stay and erratic conduct, but neither the people he came in contact with nor the authorities were aware of it. Simmons was with him all the time, and could no doubt explain many things, but the man was not available. In despair, I asked for a file of one of the daily papers, to see if anything remarkable occurred about the first of November, and my attention was arrested by a thrilling paragraph relating to the death of a young lady. It ran thus:—
"Murder or Suicide?—It is our painful duty to notify the death of the daughter of M. Rousell, the famous sculptor. The young lady was only nineteen years of age, and had shown great promise as a painter. Her voice would have insured her a hearty welcome on the operatic stage. A more accomplished, beautiful and fascinating young lady it would be difficult to find, and much sympathy is felt for the bereaved father, the more so on account of the manner of his daughter's death. She was found in the public gardens stabbed to the heart."
A few days afterwards another short paragraph appeared on the subject. It read as follows:—
"The Death of Mdlle. Rousell.—We have nothing fresh to communicate regarding this unfortunate occurrence, except that her father had noticed that her mind seemed much disturbed about the period of her death, and the police state that it is now shown that she was accustomed to keep appointments with some strange man. It was understood that in January she was to be wed to a gentleman holding a high position in the Government, and who has been in a raging fever ever since his great loss was communicated to him. The authorities are making extraordinary exertions to clear up the mystery."
This murder or suicide took place a few days before the death of Lord Seamord. Knowing his partiality for the fair sex, and his unscrupulous character, it was possible that there might be some connection between the two events. Was he the unknown man that Mdlle. Rousell met by stealth? It did not take me long to discover that his lordship in his assumed name was a frequent visitor to the studio of the sculptor, and he had undoubtedly seen the daughter there, but I could not make out for certain that there had been any acquaintanceship between them, or even an introduction, and, however bad the man was, I could not believe for a moment that he would take away the life of this charming girl. He lived in good but not extravagant style in Milan, and the money question was as much involved in obscurity as ever. One thing the banker told me, which only made matters more mysterious still, and that was that very heavy sums had been remitted from England, and that his balance was nearly all drawn out immediately before his death. It was no use stopping any longer in Milan, and I returned to England, determined to have a little explanation with Robert Simmons. He could at the very least give me some account of the missing money.
None of the Craigmillar people had heard anything of the man, but I succeeded in getting his portrait and address of his parents, who resided near Carlisle. I hunted them up, but it was somewhat akin to pulling stubborn teeth to extract information out of them. They had evidently been warned not to let anyone know their son's whereabouts. There was no getting a direct answer out of them, and this reticence only made me the more anxious to have a few minutes' private conversation with Simmons. They were old and ignorant people, and I made sure that if any correspondence was going on a third party conducted it for them. This proved to be correct. The village schoolmaster wrote their letters, and on the plea that Lady Seamord had a small legacy to pay the man, I had no difficulty in obtaining the wished-for address. The letters were addressed the Poste Restante, New York. So Simmons had thought it advisable to take up his abode on the other side of the Atlantic. Another suspicious circumstance.
A Cunard boat soon landed me in America, and I immediately stationed a trustworthy detective at the Poste Restante, while I made some cautious enquiries in the town. On the fourth day a man answering the description of Lord Seamord's servant called at the post-office for letters from England for Robert Simmons, and was followed to one of the best hotels in New York. Possibly he had secured employment there as a waiter. As he did not know me from Adam I had no hesitation in taking up my quarters in Fifth Avenue Hotel. Up to dinner time nothing occurred. I did not even catch a glimpse of Simmons, and none of the other servants knew him by that name, but I was on the brink of a startling discovery.
When the gong sounded for dinner there walked into the room an exact counterpart of the late Lord Seamord. From the portrait in my possession the most unbelieving would have sworn that it was the man himself. Tall, dark, and cruel-looking, the resemblance was, to say the least of it, extraordinary, and this was a phase in the enquiry which I had not anticipated. The fact of Simmons being also in the hotel convinced me that I was about to fathom some terrible mystery. The bookkeeper in answer to my question said the tall, dark gentleman was an Englishman named Mayhurst, and had been living in the hotel with his servant for a month or two. A few days convinced me there was no mistake—that the real Lord Seamord and his servant was residing in the hotel under feigned names. What did that false funeral at Craigmillar mean? who was the man interred? why was the body stolen? and what all powerful motives had compelled Lord Seamord to adopt such an unheard-of line of conduct? The plan had been thought of and matured at Milan, and the large amounts of money wore no doubt in the hands of the rightful owner. Had the violent death of Mdlle. Rousell anything to do with these marvellous disclosures?
When I was certain that there was no mistake about the two men, I telegraphed to Mr. Johnson, the family solicitor, asking him to come to New York at once, as something of the greatest importance connected with the disappearance of the body at Craigmillar had occurred. He replied promptly, and was with me in less than a fortnight. I took him to a different hotel, but close to where I was staying; and when I had prepared his mind a little for the startling news, I told him what I had discovered. The old man was horrified, and flatly declined to believe me, but before the end of the day I had placed him in a position to convince himself that what I had stated was perfectly correct. Lord Seamord he had known all his life, and therefore, although I might, he could not well be mistaken. Nothing was decided that night; Mr. Johnson was too incapable of acting in a sane fashion; but next morning after a long conversation between us, in the course of which I produced the Milan journals concerning the two paragraphs about the death of the sculptor's daughter, he elected to seek an interview alone with his lordship.
Hour after hour passed, and Mr. Johnson did not return to his hotel, where I was waiting for him, and I began to get alarmed. I was just about to set out in search, of him, when he arrived, looking crushed and heartbroken, and there was appearance of tears on his blanched cheeks. It must have been a terrible meeting, but I never heard a full account of what took place; he was only authorised to tell me what had been carefully written for him on a sheet of notepaper. The following is a copy of the statement, which was in Lord Seamord's handwriting:—
"Mdlle. Rousell was the innocent cause of what has occurred. I fell madly in love with her, and determined to carry her off. Under a promise of marriage she met me clandestinely, unknown to anyone. My plans were complete when her death occurred. It was my blame, but I have never in my life raised my hand in violence to a woman. To save her honour she stabbed herself to the heart. I had good reasons for believing that I was being watched by the police, and to prevent the disgrace to my family of my being tried for murder, I, with the assistance of Simmons and a doctor attached to the hospital, pretended to die, and a dead body was secretly conveyed into the house and interred at Craigmillar. It was my wishing to make assurance doubly sure, and destroy all possible traces of the deception which has led to the discovery. I shall never resume the title again, and to all intents and purposes I am legally dead. My wife may rejoin me if it pleases her. Mr. Johnson has my instructions."
He did not deserve it, but his wife, on the pretence of entering a convent, soon hastened to his side. Women, always excepting mothers-in-law, are so forgiving.