CHAPTER XXII.
THE INEXPLICABLE CONDUCT OF MISS CLARA.
A youngerand more pessimistically disposed man than I might conceivably have been plunged into the depths of despair at being thus told by the woman he loved that she hated him. But, on the whole, I was not inclined to be altogether dissatisfied with the interview. Never before—even though her words were sympathetic and her manner not unkindly—had she failed to make me realise that I was kept at a distance; that I was an unvouched-for stranger, between whom and her the barriers of custom and convention still necessarily existed. But her words and her acts of to-day—so it seemed to me—were a tacit admission that the barrier had been removed. She had concerned herself sufficiently in my career to express a wish in regard to it (though here I fear she acted on her aunt's instigation rather than from any impulse or inclination of her own); she had made the granting of that wish a favour to herself, and hadeven suffered me to declare my love unreproved. Her tears had, I admit, at the moment utterly dismayed me; but remembering the subsequent by-play of the uneclipsed eye, I was now disposed to think either that those tears were caused by pique at the fact that I had not more promptly acceded to her request, or that they were no more than the legitimate use of a woman's natural weapon for the confounding and undoing of man. Possibly, too—so I tried to persuade myself—the exclamation "I hate you—I hate you!" was less an expression of personal dislike than a pretty woman's very pardonable exhibition of captiousness at finding herself thwarted where she had expected immediate submission and consent. With the assistance of Miss Clara, I hoped soon to regain whatever ground I had lost in her niece's favour, and as, after leaving us, the older lady had made straight for the garden, and had (as I could see from the window) been pacing it bareheaded, hands clasped behind her and deep in thought, I ventured to lift the window, and to ask her to spare me a moment before I went.
She came in at once, looking, I thought, a trifle tired and pale, but otherwise alltrace of agitation was gone, and she spoke with all her usual self-possession.
"Mr. Rissler," she said, coming to the point as usual, the instant the door was closed; "what have you and Clara been talking about?"
"My work," I answered laconically. "I'm to throw up crime investigation, and devote myself to something else."
"And you have promised?"
"Well, no, I haven't. I had the temerity to ask for some reason why I should be called upon to take so extraordinary a course, with the result that your niece first burst into tears, and then flung out of the room in a passion. Do you know why?"
She did not condescend to answer.
"Mr. Rissler," she said, "give up this detective work at once. Devote all your time to book-writing, and I'll stand your friend. Refuse, and you do not enter the house or see Clara again."
"The devil is in it!" I exclaimed rudely and with exasperation. "I'll do anything to please you, who have proved yourself so true and so generous a friend. But surely I'm entitled to a reason. I admit frankly that I'm less keen on this workthan I was before I heard the Dumpling's passionate plea for the poor—a plea which seemed to me a sort of conscription, calling upon and compelling every able-bodied man to enlist himself and to take up arms in so sacred a cause. I don't say that I mightn't see my way, sooner or later, perhaps even at once, to give up the detective business, if giving it up means pleasing you and winning your niece—who, by the bye, has just done me the honour to declare that she hates me, so there seems small enough occasion to consider that aspect of the case. But when a man has devoted years of his life to any particular career, and has even made some small success at it, you can hardly expect him to throw up everything at a moment's notice, and without any sort of reason being given for the request. What is your reason? What is your niece's reason? For some reason the two of you must surely have."
"It isn't respectable, for one thing," replied Aunt Clara doggedly.
"Respectable!" I said. "Is that it? Frankly, I have always felt that there isn't very much difference, after all, between the man who uses his brains to track downand to capture a criminal—as a detective does—and the man who uses his brains to make out a case against the criminal and get him convicted—as the barrister does—and the man who, after he has listened to all that can be said about the case by everybody concerned, sums it up, and, when a verdict has been returned, passes sentence. They are all three—judge, barrister, and detective—officers of the law and servants of the King and of the public; and I'm not sure that the detective's isn't the most important and useful work of the three. Anyhow, it is the most difficult."
"Bosh!" said Miss Clara shortly. "You'll be telling me next that you might just as well be a hangman, forhe'sas much an officer of the law and a servant of the King and of the public as the other three; and so, according to your showing, equally respectable. Bosh, Mr. Rissler! Bosh!"
"All right. Bosh it is, then!" I replied amicably. "Anything for a quiet life, and I admit I hadn't thought of your holding trumps all the time, and playing the hangman card. Anyhow, I'm answered on that score. What a wonderful woman you are!Judge, barrister, and detective all rolled into one. A great lawyer was lost to the world when it was decided that you should come into it wearing petticoats instead of a wig and gown."
"You're a fool!" said Miss Clara, not ill-pleased, in spite of the uncompromising plainness of her language.
"And now, what about the detective business?" she went on. "Are you going to give it up, or are you not? For you have got to decide one way or the other before you come here again. I wouldn't see my niece for the present, if I were you. She'll come round in time, like the rest of us, if she's left alone. There's nothing a woman hates so much as being taken at her word, and left alone. There are many more women who have gone back on what they'd said, and let a man have his own way, after swearing they wouldn't—there are many more who have done that, and been brought round to another way of thinking, just by being left alone, than by any other way. Pestering a woman, pleading with her, imploring her, is precious little use. You take the tip from me, young man—I know."
"You're a wonder, Miss Carleton, as I said before," I answered. "And I'll take a tip from you as eagerly as I'd take a kiss, if you'd give me one."
"Oh, bosh! Don't bother me! You're a fool—as I told you before," she retorted. "But think it over; take time, if you like, but think it over, and if you are a wise man and decide to do as I wish, as both of us wish, I'll stand your friend."
"Miss Carleton," I said, "I'll be frank with you. It doesn't want much thinking over. I had thought it over before I came here, and had practically decided for the present, at all events, to leave the detective work alone. The singular and to me entirely inexplicable attitude which you and your niece have chosen to take up, in giving me, so to speak, an ultimatum either to drop the work or to consider myself forbidden this house, aroused, just for a moment, an Irishman's love of fight, an Irishman's cussedness and contradictoriness. But I'll do as you say, and for the present, at all events, will leave Dumpling-hunting and detective work alone. I don't make any great sacrifice in doing so, as far as the Dumpling is concerned; for when he went away he was intoo much of a hurry to leave me his visiting card, and I don't know where to find him if I wanted to. The only clue I have to him is concerned with this house, the doors of which, unless I drop detective work, must, you say, be closed to me. Moreover, whatever may have been his purpose in coming here and in watching this place (and I still suspect that he intends, or intended, to kidnap your brother), it is likely that that purpose he has for the present dropped. In fact, after so narrowly escaping capture here at the hands of the police, this house—for some time, at least—he is likely carefully to avoid. So even that clue is 'off.'"
"I'm very glad to hear it," was her reply. "Yes, what is it, Metcalfe? Do you want me?"
"If you please, m'm," answered Metcalfe, who had opened the door while Miss Clara was speaking, and was standing in an apologetic way with one hand on the handle. "I knocked twice, but you were talking and didn't hear me," he went on. "Miss Kate sent me. She'd like a word with you at once, please, and before Mr. Rissler goes."
"All right—I'll come."
Then, Metcalfe having made his bow and gone, she turned to me:
"You'll find theTimesthere on the table. I shan't be away long."
But she was away long—so long, indeed, that she did not return at all. For almost an hour I was left alone, and then the door opened a few inches, and instead of Miss Clara, Kate slipped quickly in.
Closing it, but with one hand still holding the handle, she faced me. She looked deadly pale, and trembled violently.
"Mr. Rissler," she said, "my aunt tells me that you have promised her what you refused to promise me—that you will in future abandon the dangerous and not altogether creditable line of work you have taken up in constituting yourself a detective. Is that so?"
"That is so," I answered hotly; "but in regard to its being a discreditable occupation, and in regard to my having promised Miss Carleton what I would not promise to you, I must protest——"
"Forgive me," she said coldly, "but I cannot argue the matter, or listen to any explanation or protestation. I have comehere to ask you—to bid you—for my aunt, as well as for myself, to leave this house instantly, and never, under any circumstances, to enter it again."