CHAPTER XXXV.WHAT HAPPENED AT WINDSOR.
“Yes,” repeated Richard Thornton, “I have reason to believe that the will witnessed by your husband is a very unpleasantpiece of literature in the estimation of Launcelot Darrell, for I fancy that it gives a death-blow to all his expectations, and leaves him without even the meagre consolation of that solitary shilling which is usually inherited by unhappy elder sons.”
“But tell me why you think this, Richard.”
“I will, my dear Mrs. Monckton. The story is rather a long one, but I think I can tell it in a quarter of an hour. Can you dress for dinner in the other quarter?”
“Oh, yes, yes!”
“What a nuisance civilization is, Nelly. We never dressed for dinner in the Pilasters; indeed, the fashion amongst the leading families in that locality leans rather the other way. The gentlemen in the cab and chimney line generally take off their coats when the mid-day meal is announced, in order to dine coolly and comfortably in their shirt-sleeves.”
“Richard, Richard!” cried Eleanor, impatiently.
“Well, well, Mrs. Monckton, seriously, you shall have my Windsor adventures. I hate this man, Launcelot Darrell, for I believe he is a shallow, selfish, cold-hearted coxcomb; or else I don’t think I could have brought myself to do what I’ve done to-day. I’ve been playing the spy, Eleanor, for a couple of hours at least. The Duke of Otranto used to find plenty of people for this kind of work—artists, actors, actresses, priests, women, every creature whom you would least suspect of baseness. But they manage these things better in France. We don’t take to the business so readily upon this side of the water.”
“Richard!”
The girl’s impatience was almost uncontrollable. She watched the hands of a little clock upon the chimney-piece: the firelight flashed every now and then upon the dial, and then faded out, leaving it dark.
“I’m coming to the story, Nell, if you’ll only be patient,” remonstrated Mr. Thornton. He was getting over that secret sorrow which he had nursed for such a long time in the lowest depths of a most true and faithful breast. He was growing reconciled to the Inevitable, as we all must, sooner or later; and he had resumed that comfortable brotherly familiarity which had been so long habitual to him in his intercourse with Eleanor. “Only be patient, my dear, and let me tell my story my own way,” he pleaded. “I left here early this morning in your husband’s dog-cart, intending to drive over to Windsor and amuse myself by exploring the town, and the castle, if possible, to see if there was anything in my way to be picked up—donjon keeps, turret staircases, secret corridors, and so on, you know. You remember what sort of a morning it was, bleak and dismal enough, but until twelve o’clock no rain. It was within a quarter of an hour of twelve when I got into Windsor, and the rain wasjust beginning, spiteful drops of rain and particles of sleet, that came down obliquely and cut into your face like so many needlepoints. I stopped at an inn in a perpendicular street below the castle, which looks as if it means to topple down and annihilate that part of the town some of these days. I put up the dog-cart, and asked a few questions about the possibility of getting admission to the royal dwelling-place. Of course I was informed that such admission was to-day utterly impracticable. I could have seen the state apartments yesterday. I could see them, most likely, by the end of next week; but I couldn’t see them when I wanted to see them. I hinted that my chief desire was to see secret passages, donjon keeps, moats, and sliding panels; but neither the landlord nor the waiter seemed to understand me, and I sat down rather despondently by the window of the tavern parlour to wait till the rain was over, and I could go out and prowl upon the castle terrace to study wintry effects in the park.”
“But Launcelot Darrell, Richard—where did you meet Launcelot Darrell?”
“I am coming to him presently. The perpendicular street wasn’t particularly lively upon this wretched February day; so, as there weren’t any passers-by to look at, I amused myself by looking at the houses facing the inn. Immediately opposite to me there was a house very superior to the others in style—a red brick house of the Georgian era, modernized by plate-glass windows and green blinds—not a large house, but eminently respectable. A dazzling brass plate adorned the door, and upon this brass plate, which winked and twinkled in the very face of the rain, I read the name of Mr. Henry Lawford, solicitor.”
“The lawyer whose clerk made Mr. de Crespigny’s will?”
“Precisely. Upon one side of the door there was a bell-handle inscribed ‘Visitors,’ on the other a duplicate handle inscribed ‘Office.’ I hadn’t been looking at the house above five minutes, when a young man, with a slender silk umbrella, struggling against the wind, rang the office-bell.”
“The young man was Launcelot Darrell?” Eleanor cried, quickly.
“He was. The door was opened by a boy, of whom Mr. Darrell asked several questions. Whatever the answers were, he walked away, and the door was shut. But from his manner of strolling slowly along the street, I was convinced that he was not going far, and that he meant to come back. People don’t usually stroll in a sharp rain that comes down obliquely and seems to drift in your face from every point of the compass. He’ll come back presently, I thought; so I ordered a bottle of pale ale, and I waited.”
“And he came back?”
“Yes, he came back in about half an hour; but, ten minutesor so before he returned, I saw a shabby-genteel, elderly man let himself in with a latch-key at a small green side door with ‘Clerks’ Office’ painted in white letters on the panel. I knew by the look of this man that he must be a clerk. There’s a look about an attorney’s clerk that you can’t mistake, even when he doesn’t carry a blue bag; and this man did carry one. Ten minutes afterwards Launcelot Darrell returned. This time he knocked with the handle of his umbrella at the green door, which was opened by the boy, who went to fetch the elderly clerk. This elderly clerk and Mr. Darrell stood on the door-step talking confidentially for about five minutes, and then our friend the artist went away: but this time again strolled slowly through the rain; as if he had a certain interval to dispose of, and scarcely knew what to do with himself.
“I suppose the amateur detective business fills a man’s mind with all manner of suspicious fancies, Eleanor. However that may be, I could not help thinking that there was something queer in these two visits of Launcelot Darrell to the red brick house opposite me. What did he want with a lawyer in the first place? and if he did want a lawyer, why didn’t he go straight to Mr. Lawford, who was at home—for I could see his head across the top of the wire blind in one of the plate-glass windows as he bent over his desk—instead of tampering with small boys and clerks? There was something mysterious in the manner of his hanging about the place; and as I had been watching him wearily for a long time without being able to find out anything mysterious in his conduct, I determined to make the most of my chances and watch him to some purpose to-day.
“‘He’ll come back,’ I thought, ‘unless I’m very much mistaken.’
“I was very much mistaken, for Launcelot Darrell did not come back; but a few minutes after the clock struck one, the green door opened, and the elderly clerk came out, without the blue bag this time, and walked nimbly up the street in the direction that Launcelot Darrell had taken.
“‘He’s going to his dinner,’ I thought, ‘or he’s going to meet Launcelot Darrell.’
“I put on my hat, and went out of the house. The clerk was toiling up the perpendicular street a good way ahead of me, but I managed to keep him in sight and to be close upon his heels when he turned the corner into the street below the towers of the castle. He walked a little way along this street, and then went into one of the principal hotels.
“‘Ah, my friend!’ I said to myself, ‘you don’t ordinarily take your dinner at that house, I imagine. It’s a cut above your requirements, I should think.’
“I went into the hotel, and made my way to the coffee-room.Mr. Launcelot Darrell and the shabby-genteel clerk were sitting at a table, drinking sherry and soda-water. The artist was talking to his companion in a low voice, and very earnestly. It was not difficult to see that he was trying to persuade the seedy clerk to something which the clerk’s sense of caution revolted from. Both men looked up as I went into the room, which they had had all to themselves until that moment; and Launcelot Darrell flushed scarlet as he recognized me. It was evident, therefore, that he did not care to be seen in the company of Mr. Lawford’s clerk.
“‘Good morning, Mr. Darrell,’ I said; ‘I’ve come over to have a look at the castle, but I find strangers are not admitted to-day, so I’m obliged to content myself with walking about in the wet for an hour or two.’
“Launcelot Darrell answered me in that patronizing manner which renders him so delightful to the people he considers inferior to himself. He had quite recovered from the confusion my sudden appearance had caused, and muttered something about Mr. Lawford, the attorney, and ‘business.’ Then he sat biting his nails in an uncomfortable and restless manner, while I drank another bottle of pale ale. That’s another objection to the detective business; it involves such a lot of drinking.
“I left the hotel, and left Mr. Darrell and the clerk together; but I didn’t go very far. I contrived somehow or other to be especially interested in that part of the exterior of the castle visible from the street in which the hotel is situated, and, in a manner, kept one eye upon the stately towers of the royal residence, and the other upon the doorway out of which Launcelot Darrell and Mr. Lawford’s clerk must by-and-by emerge. In about half-an-hour I had the satisfaction of seeing them appear, and contrived, most innocently, of course, to throw myself exactly in their way at the corner of the perpendicular street.
“I was amply rewarded for any trouble I had taken; for I never saw a face that so plainly expressed rage, mortification, disappointment, almost despair, as did the face of Launcelot Darrell, when I came against him at the street corner. He was as white as a sheet, and he scowled at me savagely as he passed me by. Not as if he recognized me; the fixed look in his face showed that his mind was too much absorbed by one thought for any consciousness of exterior things; but as if in his suppressed fury he was ready to go blindly against anybody or anything that came in his way.”
“But why, Richard, why was he so angry?” cried Eleanor, with her hands clenched and her nostrils quivering with the passage of her rapid breath. “What does it all mean?”
“Unless I’m very much mistaken, Mrs. Monckton, it means that Launcelot Darrell has been tampering with the clerk of thelawyer who drew up Mr. de Crespigny’s last will, and that he now knows the worst——”
“And that is——”
“The plain fact, that unless that will is altered the brilliant Mr. Darrell will not inherit a penny of his kinsman’s fortune.”
The second dinner-bell rang while Richard was speaking, and Eleanor ran away to make some hurried change in her toilette, and to appear in the drawing-room, agitated and ill at ease, ten minutes after Mr. Monckton’s punctilious butler had made his formal announcement of the principal meal of the day.