Whitborough was a good-sized, bustling town, sending two members to parliament. In the heart of it lived Mr. Dale, the lawyer, who did a little in money-lending as well. He was a short stout man, with a red face and no whiskers, nearly bald on the top of his round head; and he usually attired himself in the attractive costume of a brown tail coat and white neckcloth.
On this same morning which had witnessed the departure of Sir Nash Bohun and his son from Dallory Hall, Mr. Dale, known commonly amongst his townsfolks as Lawyer Dale--was seated in his office at Whitborough. It was a small room, containing a sort of double desk, at which two people might face each other. The lawyer's seat was against the wall, his face to the room; a clerk sometimes sat, or stood on the other side when business was pressing. Adjoining this office was one for the clerks, three of whom were kept; and clients had to pass through their room to reach the lawyer's.
Mr. Dale was writing busily. The clock was on the stroke of twelve, and a great deal of the morning's work had still to be done, when one of the clerks came in: a tall, thin, cadaverous youth with black hair, parted into a flat curl on his forehead.
"Are you at home, sir?"
"Who is it?" asked Mr. Dale, growling at the interruption.
"Mr. Richard North."
"Send him in."
Richard came in; a fine looking man in his mourning clothes; the lawyer could not help thinking so. After shaking hands--a ceremony Mr. Dale liked to observe with all his clients, when agreeable to them--he came from behind his desk to seat himself in his elbow-chair of red leather, and gave Richard a seat opposite. The room was small, the desk and other furniture large, and they sat very close together. Richard held his hat on his knee.
"You guess, no doubt, what has brought me here, Mr. Dale. Now that my ill-fated brother is put out of our sight in his last resting-place, I have leisure and inclination to look into the miserable event that sent him there. I shall spare neither expense nor energy in discovering--if it may be--the traitor."
"You allude to the anonymous letter."
"Yes. And I have come to ask you to give me all the information you can about it."
"But, my good sir, I have no information to give. I don't possess any."
"I ought to have said details of the attendant circumstances. Let me hear your history of the transaction from beginning to end: and if you can give me any hint as to the writer--that is, if you have formed any private opinion about him--I trust you will do so."
Mr. Dale could be a little tricky on occasion; he was sometimes engaged in transactions that would not have borne the light of day, and that most certainly he would never have talked about. On the other hand, he could be honest and truthful where there existed no reason for being the contrary: and this anonymous letter business came under the latter category.
"The transaction was as open and straightforward as possible," spoke the lawyer--and Richard, a judge of character and countenances, saw he was speaking the truth. "Mr. Edmund North came to me one day some short time ago, wanting me to let him have a hundred pounds on his own security. I didn't care to do that--I knew about his bill transactions, you see--and I proposed that some one should join him. Eventually he came with Alexander the surgeon, and the matter was arranged."
"Do you know for what purpose he wanted the money?"
"For his young brother, Sidney North. A fast young man, that, Mr. Richard," added the lawyer in significant tones.
"Yes. Unfortunately."
"Well, he had got into some secret trouble, and came praying to Mr. Edmund to get him out of it. Whatever foolish ways Edmund North had wasted money in, there's this consolation remaining to his friends--that the transaction which eventually sent him to his grave was one of pure kindness," added the lawyer warmly. "'My father has enough trouble,' he remarked to me; 'with one thing and another, his life's almost worried out of him; and I don't care that he should hear what Master Sidney's been up to, if it can be kept from him.' Yes; the motive was a good one."
"How was it he did not apply to me?" asked Richard.
"Well--had you not, just about that time, assisted your brother Edmund in some scrape of his own?"
Richard North nodded.
"Just so. He said he had not the face to apply to you so soon again; should be ashamed of himself. Well, to go on, Mr. Richard North. I gave him the money on the bill; and when it became due, neither he nor Alexander could meet it: so I agreed to renew it. Only one day after that, the anonymous letter found its way to Dallory Hall."
"You are sure of that?"
"Certain. The bill was renewed on the 30th of April; here, in this very room. Mr. North received the letter on the 1st of May."
"It was so. By the evening post."
"So that, if the transaction got wind through that renewing, the writer did not lose much time about it."
"Well now, Mr. Dale, in what way could that transaction have got wind, and who heard of it?"
"I never spoke of it to a human being," impetuously cried the lawyer. And Richard North again felt sure that he spoke the truth.
"The transaction, from the beginning, was known only to us three men: Edmund North, the surgeon, and myself. I don't believe either of them mentioned it at all. I know I did not. It's just possible Edmund North might have told his stepbrother Sidney how he got the money--the young scamp. I beg your pardon, Mr. Richard; I forgot he was your brother also."
"It would be to Sidney's interest to keep it quiet," remarked Richard. "Our men at the works have a report amongst them--I know not where picked up, and I don't think they know either--that the writer was your clerk, Wilks."
"Nonsense!" contemptuously rejoined the lawyer. "I've heard the report also. Why should Wilks trouble his head about it? Don't believe anything so foolish."
"I don't believe it," returned Richard North. "Wilks could have no motive whatever for it, as far as I can see. But I think that he may have become cognizant of the affair, and talked of it abroad."
"Not one of my clerks knew anything about it," protested Mr. Dale. "I've three of 'em: Wilks and two others. You don't suppose, sir, I take them into my confidence in all things."
"But, is it quite impossible that any one of them--say Wilks--could have found it out surreptitiously?" urged Richard.
"Wilks has nothing surreptitious about him," said the lawyer. "He is too shallow for it. A thoroughly useful clerk, but a man without guile."
"I did not mean to apply the word to him personally. I'll change it if you like. Could Wilks, or either of the other two, have accidentally learnt this, without your knowledge? Was there a possibility of it? Come, Mr. Dale; be open with me. Even if it were so, no blame would attach to you."
"It is just this," answered Mr. Dale: "I don't see how it was possible for any one of them to have learnt it; and yet at the same time, I see no other way in which it could have transpired. That's the candid truth. I lay awake one night for half-an-hour, turning the puzzle over in my mind. Alexander says he never opened his lips about it; I know I did not; and poor Edmund North went into his fatal passion thinking Alexander wrote the letter, because he said Alexander alone knew of it; a pretty sure proof he had not talked about it himself."
"Which brings us back to your clerks," remarked Richard North. "They might have overheard a few chance words when the bill was renewed."
"I'm sure the door was shut," debated Mr. Dale, in a tone as if he were not sure, but rather sought to persuade himself that he was so. "Only Wilks was in, that morning; the other two had gone out."
"Rely upon it that's how it happened. The door could not have been quite closed."
"Well, I don't know. I generally shut it myself, and carefully too, when important clients are in here. I confess," honestly added Mr. Dale, "that it's the only explanation I can see in the matter. If the door was unlatched, Wilks might have heard. I had him in last night, and taxed him with it. He denies it out and out: says that, even if the affair had come to his knowledge, he knows his duty better than to have talked about it."
"I don't doubt that he does, when in his sober senses. But he is not always in them."
"Oh, come, Mr. Richard North, it is not as bad as that."
Richard was silent. If Mr. Dale was satisfied with his clerk and his clerk's discretion, he had no desire to render him otherwise.
"He takes too much now and then, you know, Mr. Dale; and he may have dropped a word in some enemy's hearing: who perhaps caught it up and then wrote the letter. Would you mind my questioning him?"
"He is not here to be questioned, or you might do it and welcome," replied Mr. Dale. "Wilks is lying up to-day. He has not been well for more than a week past; could hardly do his work yesterday."
"I'll take an opportunity of seeing him then," said Richard. "My father won't rest until the writer of this letter has been traced; neither, in truth, shall I."
The lawyer said good-morning to his visitor, and returned to his desk. But ere he recommenced work, he thought over the chief subject of their conversation. Had the traitor been Wilks, he asked himself. What Richard North had said was perfectly true--the young man sometimes took too much after work was over. But Mr. Dale had hitherto found no reason to complain of his discretion; and, difficult as it seemed to find any other loophole of suspicion, he finally concluded that he had no reason to do so now.
Meanwhile Richard North walked back to Dallory--it was nearly two miles from Whitborough. Passing his works, he continued his way a little further, to a turning called North Inlet, in which were some houses, large and small, chiefly tenanted by his workpeople. In one of these, a pretty cottage standing back, lodged Timothy Wilks. The landlady was a relative of Wilks's, and as he paid very little for his two rooms, he did not mind the walk once a-day to and from Whitborough.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Green. Is Timothy Wilks in?"
Mrs. Green, an ancient matron in a mob-cap, was on her knees, whitening the door-step. She rose at the salutation, saw it was Richard North, and curtsied.
"Tim have just crawled out to get a bit o' sunshine, sir. He's very bad to-day. Would you please to walk in, Mr. Richard?"
Amidst this colony of his workpeople he was chiefly known as "Mr. Richard." Mrs. Green's husband was timekeeper at the North Works.
"What's the matter with him?" asked Richard, as he stepped over the threshold and the bucket to the little parlour.
"Well, sir, I only hope it's not low fever; but it looks to me uncommon like it."
"Since when has he been ill?"
"He have been ailing this fortnight past. The fact is, sir, he won't keep steady," she added in deploring tones. "Once a-week he's safe to come home the worse for drink, and that's pay night; and sometimes it's oftener than that. Then for two days afterwards he can't eat; and so it goes on, and he gets as weak as a rat. It's not that he takes much drink; it is that a little upsets him. Some men could take half-a-dozen glasses a'most to his one."
"What a pity it is!" exclaimed Richard.
"He had a regular bout of it a week or so ago," resumed Mrs. Green; who once set off on the score of Timothy's misdoings, never knew when to stop. It was so well known to North Inlet, this failing of the young man's, that she might have talked of it in the market-place and not betrayed confidence. "He had been ailing before, as I said, Mr. Richard; off his food, and that; but one night he caught it smartly, and he's been getting worse ever since."
"Caught what smartly?" asked Richard, not posted up in North Inlet idioms.
"Why, the drink, sir. He came home reeling, and give his head such a bang again the door-post that it knocked him back'ards. I got him up somehow--Green was out--and on to his bed, and there he went off in a dead faint. I'd no vinegar in the house: if you want a thing in a hurry you're sure to be out of it: so I burnt a feather up his nose, and that brought him to. He began to talk all sorts of nonsense then, about doing 'bills,' whatever that might mean, and old Dale's money-boxes, running words into one another like mad, so that you couldn't make top or tail of it. I'd never seen him as bad as this, and got frightened."
She paused to take breath, always short with Mrs. Green. The words "doing bills" struck Richard North. He immediately perceived that hence might have arisen the report--for she had no doubt talked of this publicly--that Timothy Wilks was the traitor. Other listeners could put two and two together as well as he.
"I thought I'd get in the vinegar, in case he went off again," resumed Mrs. Green. "And when I was running round to the shop for it--leastways walking, for I can't run now--who should I meet, turning out of Ketler's but Dr. Rane. I stopped to tell him, and he said he'd look in and see Tim. He's a kind man in sickness, Mr. Richard."
"Did Dr. Rane come?" asked Richard.
"Right off, sir, there and then. When I got back he had put cloths of cold water on Tim's head. And wasn't Tim talking! You might have thought him a show-man at the fair. The doctor wrote something on paper with his pencil and sent me off again to Stevens the druggist's, and Stevens he gave me a little bottle of white stuff ta bring back. The doctor gave Tim some of it in a teacup of cold water, and it sent him into a good sleep. But he has never been well, sir, since then: and now I misdoubt me but it will end in low fever."
"Do you remember what night this was?" asked Richard.
"Ay, that I do, sir. For the foolish girls was standing out by twos and threes, making bargains with their sweethearts to go a-maying at morning dawn. I told 'em they'd a deal better stop indoors to mend their stockings. 'Twas the night afore the first of May, Mr. Richard."
"The evening of the day the bill was renewed," thought Richard. He possessed the right clue now. If he had entertained any doubt of Wilks before, this set it at rest.
"Did any of the neighbours hear Tim talking?" he asked.
"Not a soul but me and Dr. Rane here, sir. But I believe he had been holding forth to a room-full at the Wheatsheaf. They say he was in part gone when he got there. Oh, it does make me so vexed, the ranting way he goes on when the drink's in him. If his poor father and mother could look up from their graves, they'd be fit to shake him in very shame. Drink is the worst curse that's going, Mr. Richard--and poor Tim's weak head won't stand hardly a drop of it."
She had told all she knew. Richard North stepped over the bucket again, remarking that he might meet Tim. Sure enough he did so. In taking a cross-cut to the works, he came upon him, leaning against the wooden railings that bordered a piece of waste land. He looked very ill: Richard saw that: a small, slight young man with a mild, pleasant countenance and inoffensive manners. His mother had been a cousin of Mrs. Green's, but superior to the Greens in station. Timothy would have held his head considerably above North Inlet, but for being brought down both in consequence and pocket by his oft-recurring failing.
Kindly and courteously, but with a resolute tone not to be mistaken, Richard North entered on his questioning. He did not suspect Wilks of having written the anonymous letter; he told him this candidly; but he suspected, nay, knew, that it must have been written by some one who had gathered certain details from Wilks's gossip. Wilks, weak and ill, acknowledged that the circumstance of the drawing of the bill; or rather the renewing of one; had penetrated to his hearing in Mr. Dale's office; but he declared that he had not, as far as he knew, repeated it again.
"I'd no more talk of our office business, sir, than I'd write an anonymous letter," said he, much aggrieved. "Mr. Dale never had a more faithful clerk about him than I am."
"I dare say you would not, knowingly," was Richard's rejoinder. "Answer me one question, Wilks. Have you any recollection of haranguing the public at the Wheatsheaf?"
Mr. Wilks's reply to this was, that he had not harangued the public at the Wheatsheaf. He remembered being at the house quite well, and there had been a good deal of argument in the parlour; chiefly, he thought, touching the question as to whether masters in general ought not to give holiday on the first of May. There had been no particular haranguing on his part, he declared; and he could take his oath that he never opened his lips there about what had come to his knowledge. One thing he did confess, on being pressed by Richard--that he had no remembrance of quitting the Wheatsheaf, or of how he reached home. He retained a faint idea of having seen Dr. Rane's face bending over him later, but could not say whether it was dream or reality.
Nothing more could be got out of Timothy Wilks. That the man was guiltless of intentional treachery was as undoubted as that the treachery had occurred through his talking. Richard North bent his steps to the Wheatsheaf, to hold conference with Packerton, the landlord of that much-frequented hostelrie.
And any information that Packerton could give, he was willing to give; but it amounted to little. Richard wanted the names of all who went into the parlour on the night of the 30th of April, during the time that Wilks was there. The landlord mentioned as many as he could remember; but said that others might have gone in and out. One man--who looked like a gentleman and sat by Wilks--was a stranger, he said; he had never seen him before or since. This man grew quite friendly with Wilks, and went out with him, propping up his steps. Packerton's son, a smart youth of thirteen, going out on an errand, had overtaken them on their way across the waste ground. (In the very path where Richard had only now encountered Wilks.) Wilks was holding on by the railings, the boy said, talking with the other as fast as he could talk, and the other was laughing. Richard North wished he could find out who this man was, and where he might be seen; for, of all the rest mentioned by the landlord, not one was at all likely to have written the anonymous letter. Packerton's opinion was that Wilks had not spoken of the matter there; he was then hardly "far enough gone" to have committed the imprudence.
"But I suppose he was when he left you," said Richard.
"Yes, sir, I'm afraid he might have been. He could talk; but every bit of reason had gone out of him. I never saw anybody but Wilks just like this when they've taken too much."
Again Richard North sought Wilks, and questioned him who this stranger, man or gentleman, might be. He might as well have questioned the moon. Wilks had a hazy impression of having been with a tall, thin, strange man: but where, or when, or how, he knew not.
"I'll ask Rane what sort of a condition Wilks was in when he saw him," thought Richard.
But Richard could not carry out his intentions until night. Business claimed him for the rest of the day, and then he went home to dinner.
Dr. Rane was in his dining-room that night, the white blind drawn before the window, and writing by the light of a shaded candle. Bessy North had said to her father that Oliver was busy with a medical work from which he expected good returns when published. It was so. He spared himself no labour; over that, or anything else: often writing far into the small hours. He was a patient, persevering man: once give him a chance of success, a fair start on life's road, and he would be sure to go on to fortune. He said this to himself continually; and he was not mistaken. But the chance had not come yet.
The clock was striking eight, when the doctor heard a ring at his door-bell, and Phillis appeared, showing in Richard North. A thrill passed through Oliver Rane; perhaps he could not have told why or wherefore.
Richard sat down and began to talk about Wilks, asking what he had to ask, entering into the question generally. Dr. Rane listened in silence.
"I beg your pardon," he suddenly said, remembering his one shaded candle. "I ought to have asked for more light."
"It's quite light enough for me," replied Richard. "Don't trouble. To go back to Wilks: Did he say anything about the bill in your hearing, Rane?"
"Not a word; not a syllable. Or, if he did, I failed to catch it."
"Old Mother Green says he talked about 'bills,'" said Richard. "That was before you saw him."
"Does she?" carelessly remarked the doctor. "I heard nothing of the kind. There was no coherence whatever in his words, so far as I noticed: one never pays much attention to the babblings of a drunken man."
"Was he quite beside himself?--quite unconscious of what he said, Rane?"
"Well, I am told that it is the peculiar idiosyncrasy of Wilks to be able to talk and yet to be unconscious for all practical purposes, and for recollection afterwards. Otherwise I should not have considered him quite so far gone as that. He talked certainly; a little; seemed to answer me in a mechanical sort of way when I asked him a question, slipping one word into another. If I had tried to understand him, I don't suppose I could have done so. He did not say much; and I was away from him a good deal about the house, looking for water and rags to put on his head."
"Then you heard nothing about it, Rane?"
"Absolutely nothing."
The doctor sat so that the green shade of the candle happened to fall on his face, making it look very pale. Richard North, absorbed in thought about Wilks, could not have told whether the face was in shadow or in light. He spoke next about the stranger who had joined Wilks, saying he wished he could find out who it was.
"A tall thin man, bearing the appearance of a gentleman?" returned Dr. Rane. "Then I think I saw him, and spoke to him."
"Where?" asked Richard with animation.
"Close to your works. He was looking in through the iron gates. After quitting Green's cottage, I crossed the waste ground, and saw him standing at the gates, under the middle gas-lamp. I had to visit a patient down by the church, and took the nearer way."
"You did not recognize him?"
"Not at all. He was a stranger to me. As I was passing, he turned and asked me whether he was going right for Whitborough. I pointed to the high-road and told him to keep straight on. Depend upon it, this was the same man."
"What could he have been looking in at my gates for?" muttered Richard. "And what--for this is of more consequence--had he been getting out of Wilks?"
"It seems rather curious altogether," remarked Dr. Rane.
"I'll find this man," said Richard, as he got up to say goodnight; "I must find him. Thank you, Rane."
But after his departure Oliver Rane did not settle to his work as before. A man, once interrupted, cannot always do so. All he did was to pace the room restlessly with bowed head, as a man in some uneasy dream. The candle burnt lower, the flame grew above the shade, throwing its light on his face, showing up its lines and angles. But it was not any brighter than when the green shade had cast over it its cadaverous hue.
"Edmund North! Edmund North!"
Did the words in all their piteous, hopeless appeal come from him? Or was it some supernatural cry in the air?