"What is it, Banks?" asked Sir Charles, looking up.
"A person wishing to see you, Sir Charles," replied Banks.
"A person! is it a man or a woman?"
"The party," said Banks, varying his word, but not altering the generic appellation,--"the party is a man, sir."
"Do I know him?"
"I should say certainly not, Sir Charles," replied Banks in a tone which intimated that if his master did know the stranger, he ought to be ashamed of himself.
"Did he give no name?"
"I ast him for his name, Sir Charles, and he only says, 'Tell your master,' he says, 'that a gentleman,' he says, 'wants to see him.'"
"Oh, tell him that he must call some other time and send in his business. I can't see him now; I'm just going out for a drive with Lady Mitford. Tell him to call again."
"There was a time, and not very long ago either," said Sir Charles, taking up the paper as Banks retired, "that if I'd been told that a man who wouldn't give his name wanted to speak to me, I should have slipped out the back-way and run for my life. But, thank God, that's all over now.--Well, Banks, what now?"
"The party is very arbitrary, Sir Charles; he won't take 'no' for an answer; and when I told him you must know his business, he bust out larfin' and told me to say he was an old messmate of yours, and had sailed with you on board the Albatross."
A red spot burned on Sir Charles Mitford's cheek as he laid the newspaper aside and said, "Show this person into the library, and deny me to every one while he remains. Let your mistress be told I am prevented by business from driving with her to-day. Look sharp!"
Mr. Banks was not accustomed to be told to "look sharp!" and during his three-months' experience of his master he had never heard him speak in so petulant a tone. "I'd no idea he'd been a seafarin' gent," he said downstairs, "or I'd a never undertook the place. The tempers of those ship-captains is awful."
When Banks had left the room Sir Charles walked to the sideboard, and leant heavily against it while he poured out and drank a liqueur-glass of brandy.
"The Albatross!" he muttered with white lips; "which of them can it be? I thought I had heard the last of that cursed name. Banks said a man; it's not the worst of them, then. That's lucky."
He went into the library and seated himself in an armchair facing the door. He had scarcely done so when Banks gloomily ushered in the stranger.
He was a middle-sized dark man, dressed in what seemed to be a seedy caricature of the then prevailing fashion. His coat had once been a bright-claret colour, but was now dull, threadbare, and frayed round the edges of the breast-pocket, out of which peeped the end of a flashy silk handkerchief. He had no shirt-collar apparent; but wore round his neck a dirty blue-satin scarf with two pins, one large and one small, fastened together by a little chain. His trousers were of a staring green shawl-pattern, cut so as to hide nearly all the boot and tightly strapped down, as was the fashion of those days; and the little of his boots visible was broken and shabby. Sir Charles looked at him hard and steadily, then gave a sigh of relief. He had never seen the man before. He pointed to a chair, into which his visitor dropped with an easy swagger; then crossed his legs, and looking at Sir Charles, said familiarly, "And how are you?"
"You have the advantage of me," said Sir Charles.
"I think I have," said the man grinning; "and what's more, I mean to keep it too. Lord, what a precious dance you have led me, to be sure!"
"Look here, sir," said Mitford "be good enough to tell me your business, and go. I'm engaged."
"Go! Oh, you're on the high jeff, are you? And engaged too! Going to drive your missis out in that pretty little trap I saw at the door? Well, I'm sorry to stop you; but you must."
"Must!"
"Yes, must. 'Tain't a nice word; but it's the word I want. Must; and I'll tell you why. You recollect Tony Butler?"
Sir Charles Mitford's colour, which had returned when he saw that his visitor was a stranger to him, and which had even increased under the insolence of the man's manner, fled at the mention of this name. His face and lips were quite white as he said, "I do indeed."
"Yes, I knew you would. Well, he's dead, Tony is."
"Thank God!" said Sir Charles; "he was a horrible villain."
"Yes," said the man pleasantly; "I think I'm with you in both those remarks. It's a good job he's dead; and he was a bad 'un, was Tony, though he was my brother."
"Your brother!"
"Ah! that's just it. We never met before, because I was in America when you and Tony were so thick together. You see I'm not such a swell as Tony was; and they--him and father, I mean--were glad to get me out of the country for fear I should spoil any of their little games. When I came back, you had given Tony a licking, so far as I could make out, though he'd never tell exactly, and your friendship was all bust up, and he was dreadfully mad with you. And that's how we never came to meet before."
"And why have we met now, pray?" said Sir Charles. "What is your business with me?"
"I'm coming to that in good time. Tony's last words to me were, 'If you want to do a good thing for yourself, Dick,' he says, 'find out a fellow named Charles Mitford. He's safe to turn up trumps some day,' says Tony, 'he's so uncommonly sharp; and whenever you get to speak to him, before you say who you are, tell him you sailed in the Albatross.' Lord bless you! I knew the lot of 'em-Crockett, and Dunks, and Lizzie Ponsford; they said you and she used to be very sweet on each other, and--"
The door opened suddenly, and Lady Mitford hurried into the room; but seeing a stranger, she drew back. Sir Charles went to the door.
"What do you want, Georgie?" said he sharply.
"I had no idea you had any one here, Charles, or I wouldn't have disturbed you. Oh, Charley, send that horrid man away, and come and drive me out."
She looked so pretty and spoke so winningly that he patted her cheek with his hand, and said in a much softer voice, "I can't come now, child. This man is here on special business, and I must go through it with him. So goodbye, pet, and enjoy yourself."
She made a little moue of entreaty, and put her hands before his face in a comic appeal; but he shook his head, kissed her cheek, and shut the door.
"Pretty creechur, that!" said his companion; "looks as well in her bonnet as out of it; and there's few of 'em does, I think."
"When did you ever see Lady Mitford before, sir?" asked Sir Charles haughtily.
"Ah! that's just it," replied Mr. Butler with a sniggering laugh. "I told you you'd led me a precious dance to find you, and so you had. Tony told me that you had regularly come to grief since you parted with him, and I had a regular hunt after you, in all sorts of lodging-houses and places. There are lots of my pals on the lookout for you now."
"Upon my soul, you're devilish kind to take all this trouble about me, Mr.--Butler. What your motive was I can't imagine."
"You'll know all in good time; I'm coming to that; and not 'Butler,' please: Mr. Effingham is my name just now; I'll tell you why by and by. Well, I couldn't get hold of you anyhow, and I thought you'd gone dead or something, when last night, as I was standing waiting to come out of the Parthenium, I heard the linkmen outside hollering 'Lady Mitford's carriage!' like mad. The name strikes on my ears, and I thought I'd wait and see her ladyship. Presently down came the lady we've just seen, leaning on the arm of a cove in a big black beard like a foreigner. 'No go,' says I, 'that's not my man;' and I says to a flunkey who was standing next to me, 'He's a rum 'un to look at, is her husband.' 'That's not her husband,' he says; 'this is Sir Charles coming now.' The name Charles and the figure being like struck me at once; so I took the flunkey into the public next door, and we had a glass, and he told me all about the old gent and his kids being drowned, and your coming in for the title. 'That's my man,' says I to myself; and I found out where you lived, and came straight on here this morning."
"And now that your prying and sneaking has been successful and you have found me, what do you want?"
"Ah! I thought you'd lose your temper; Tony always said you was hotheaded. What do I want! Well, to be very short and come to the point at once--money."
"I guessed as much."
"Yes, there's no denying it; I'm regularly stumped. I suppose you were surprised now to hear I wasn't flush, after seeing me so well got-up? But it's a deal of it dummy. These pins now,--Lowther Arcade! No ticker at the end of this guard; nothing but a key-look!" And he twitched a key out of his waistcoat-pocket. "My boots too are infernally leaky; and my hat has become quite limp from being perpetually damped and ironed. Yes, I want money badly."
"Look here, Mr.----"
"Effingham."
"Mr. Effingham, you have taken, as you yourself admit, an immense deal of trouble to hunt me up, and having found me you ask me for money, on the ground of your being the brother of an infernal scoundrel whom I had once the ill-luck to be associated with--don't interrupt me, please. It wasn't Tony Butler's fault that I didn't die on a dunghill, or that I am not now--"
"In Norfolk Island," said Mr. Effingham, getting in his words this time.
Sir Charles glared fiercely at him for an instant, and then continued: "Now I expected I should have to encounter this sort of thing from the people who pillaged me when I was poor, and would make that an excuse for further extortion, and I determined not to accede to any application. But as you're the first who has applied, and as you've neither bullied nor whined, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you, on condition I never see or hear of you again, this five-pound note."
Mr. Effingham laughed, a real hearty laugh, as he shook his head, and said: "Won't do: nothing like enough."
Sir Charles lost his temper, and said: "Stop this infernal tomfoolery, sir! Not enough! Why, d--n it, one would think you had a claim upon me!"
"And suppose I have, Sir Charles Mitford, what then?" said Mr. Effingham, leaning forward in his chair and confronting his companion.
"What then? Why--pooh, stuff! this is a poor attempt at extortion. You don't think to get any money out of me by threatening to tell of my connection with the Albatross crew? You don't think I should mind the people to whom you could tell it knowing it, do you?"
"I don't know; perhaps not; and yet I think I shall be able before I've done to prove to you I've a claim on you."
"What is it?"
"All tiled here, eh? Nobody within earshot? That sleek cove in black that wouldn't let me see you, not listening at the door, is he?"
"There is no one to hear," said Sir Charles, who was getting more and more uncomfortable at all this mystery.
"All right, then. Sorry to rake up disagreeables; but I must. You recollect making a slight mistake about your Christian name once, fancying it was Percy instead of Charles; writing it as Percy across a stamped bit of paper good for two hundred quid, and putting Redmoor as your address after it?"
"Well, what if I do?" His lips were so parched he could hardly frame the words.
"It would be awkward to have anything of that sort brought up just now, wouldn't it?"
Sir Charles hesitated for an instant, then gave a great sigh of relief as he said: "You infernal scoundrel! you think to frighten me with that, do you? To make that the ground for your extortion? Why, you miserable wretch, I myself burnt that--that--document in Moss's office!"
"How you do run on, Sir Charles! I just mentioned something about a little bill, and you're down upon me in a moment. I guessed that was destroyed; at all events I knew it was all safe; and Sir Percy's dead, so it don't much matter. But, Lord! with your memory you must surely recollect another little dockyment,--quite a little one, only five-and-twenty pound,-where you mistook both your names that time, and accepted it as Walter Burgess:--recollect?"
The pallor had spread over Mitford's face again, and his lips quivered as he said: "That was destroyed--destroyed by Tony Butler long since--before the other one was done."
"Yes, yes, I know this was the first,--a little one just to get your hand in. But it ain't destroyed. It's all right, bless you! I can see it now with a big black 'FORGED' stamped across it by the bank-people."
"Where is it?"
"Oh, it's in very safe keeping with a friend of mine who scarcely knows its value. Because, though he knows its a forgery, he don't know who done it; now, you see, through my brother Tony, I do know who done it; and I do know that Walter Burgess is alive, and is a large hop-factor down Maidstone way, and owing you a grudge for that thrashing you gave him in the billiard-rooms at Canterbury, which he's never forgotten, would come forward and prosecute at once."
"You--you might prove the forgery; but how could you connect me with it?"
"Not bad, that. But I'm ready for you. People at the bank will prove you had the money; and taken in connection with the other little business, which is well known, and which there are lots of people to prove, a jury would convict at once."
Sir Charles Mitford shuddered, and buried his face in his hands. Then, looking up, said: "How much do you want for that bill?"
"Well, you see, that's scarcely the question. It's in the hands of a man who don't know its value, and if he did he'd open his mouth pretty wide, and stick it on pretty stiff, I can tell you. So we can let him bide a bit. Meantime I know about it, and, as Tony told me, I intend to make it serve me. Now you want to get rid of me, and don't want to see me for some little time? I thought so. I'm not an extravagant cove; give me fifty pounds."
"Until that bill is destroyed, you will wring money from me when you choose."
"If you refused me money and I cut up rough, the bill should be produced, and you'd be in quod and Queer Street in a jiffy! Better do as I say--give me the fifty, and you shan't see me for a blue moon!"
Whether Sir Charles was stimulated by the period named or not, it is certain he sat down at his desk, and producing his cheque-book, began to write. Mr. Effingham looked over his shoulder.
"Make it payable to some number--295, or anything--not a name, please. And you needn't cross it. Lord! you didn't take much trouble to disguise your fist when you put Walter Bur--, beg pardon! quite forgot what I was saying. Thank you, Sir Charles. I'll keep my word all right, you shall see. I'm not an idle beggar; I'm always at something; so that I shan't depend entirely on this bit of gray paper; but it'll ease my springs and grease my wheels a bit. Good-day to you, Sir Charles. Never mind ringing for that solemn cove to let me out; I ain't proud. Good-day."
Mr. Effingham gave a very elaborate bow, and departed. As the door shut upon him, Sir Charles Mitford pulled his chair to the fire, and fell into a deep reverie, out of which he did not rouse himself until his wife's return.